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V 


MILLION OF FACTS, 


CONNECTED WITH THE 


STUDIES, PURSUITS, AND INTERESTS OF MANKIND. 


rr'INO AS A 


COMMON-PLACE BOOK 


USEFUL REFERENCE 


ON ALL 


SUBJECTS OF RESEARCH AND CURIOSITY. 


COLLECTED FROM THE MOST 


RESPECTABLE MODERN AUTHORITIES. 


BY SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS. 

»! 

SECOND EDITION. 

REVISED, CORRECTED, AND IMPROVED WITH ADDITIONS. 


NEW YORK: 

CONNER & COOKE, FRANKLIN BUILDINGS. 


1835 . 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, October, 1833, by 

JAMES CONNER, & WILLIAM R. COOKE, 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 












PREFACE. 


TO THE 

AMERICAN EDITION. 


The following Part, containing “A Million of Facts, is based on the 
English book of that title, from the memoranda of one of the oldest scho¬ 
lars and publishers of that country; but has been in a measure remodelled 
here. All that part relating to Religion has been omitted, as also the 
Mythology. The Geography, with the numerous tables of Statistics, 
having been anticipated in the former Parts of the Treasury of Knowledge, 
it was thought needless to bring them forward again. 

In the place of the matter excluded, the publishers have obtained from 
Samuel L. Knapp, Esq., a sketch of the Literature of the Jews; a succinct 
History of American Literature, from the earliest times, giving a sketch 
of some of the most important writers and their works; and also brief 
annals of American History,'with a cursory view of the rise and progress of 
the Useful Arts among us: other incidental facts as they came to the mind 
of the author, which he thought might be acceptable to the miscellaneous 
reader, have been added. The additions to this part have been written 
in paragraphs, with as much variety as possible, and in a style conform¬ 
able to that assumed by the English writer. 

In a Book of Reference, as this part of the Treasury of Knowledge 
especially is, the reader 'only asks for purity and clearness, and these, it 
is believed, will be found as distinctly in the additions, as in the other 
parts of the book. 

That portion of the work under the head of “ Atmospherical and Aerial 
Phenomena,” has been revised by Mr. Wm. C. Redfield, and many 
interesting facts have been added which are not found in the Encyclo¬ 
paedias and other Standard Works. The articles under the head of “ Phy¬ 
sical Geography,” have been prepared by the same hand. 

Such a volume may be taken up as matter of amusement when the 
reader has but a few minutes to spare, w and some valuable facts may be 
stored in his memory for future contemplation and use. When one be¬ 
comes acquainted with the scraps and notes contained in “The Million 
of Facts,” he will be surprised to find many things that he has been years 
in search of, and could not tell where to lay his hand on them. The fields 
of knowledge are now so extended, and so crowded, that the most indus¬ 
trious in the pursuit of information will be thankful for indices, and directo¬ 
ries in his course. 



4 


PREFACE. 


The Bibliotheca Britannica, is now considered the greatest book in the 
libraries of the learned. These ponderous volumes give at a glance the 
book and the writer, or the writer and the book; this is to the seeker of 
knowledge, what the wisdom of Daniel was to the king of Babylon, when 
he told him what hjs had dreamed, and the interpretation he sought; for, 
where some vague thought of former reading is resting in the' twilight of 
recollection, and not one of the wise men, the magicians, astrologers, or 
Chaldeans around him, can make known what is wanted, or where it may 
be found, this Bibliotheca Britannica does both : for, you may find any 
author or work, upon almost every subject in every age of literature. This 
book occupied and exhausted the labours of two gentlemen, father and 
son, who died before their work was perfected; and it remains for one of 
the third generation to complete it. This part of “ The Treasury of Know¬ 
ledge” will, if countenanced by publick patronage, in matters of fact in all 
the branches of human learning, be in some measure what the Bibliotheca 
Britannica is to authors and their works, and it may be continued to 
almost any extent that the publick may require. 

THE PUBLISHERS 


N. B. The Publishers, impressed with the value of the accompanying 
work of Facts in the pursuits of life, and being desirous to extend its use¬ 
fulness to those who do not feel disposed to purchase it as connected with 
the Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference, of which it forms 
the Fifth part, have concluded to offer it to the publick in a separate vol¬ 
ume, which they trust will meet with their approval. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 


Pacts are the data of all just reasoning, and the primary elements 
of all real knowledge. The wisest man is he who possesses the 
greatest store of Facts within the command of his understanding. A 
book, therefore, which assembles Facts from all their scattered 
sources, may be considered as a useful and important auxiliary of 
Wisdom. It lays claim to be the companion of all who earnestly 
seek truth at the fountain-head; of all who think for themselves, or 
who desire to be thought to do so; and of all who desire to correct 
errours in themselves or in others. 

The pretensions of the present Editor are a prolonged and uninter¬ 
rupted intercourse with men and books. He has for forty-two years 
been occupied, as literary conductor of various publick journals of 
reputation; he has superintended the printing of some hundred books, 
in every branch of human pursuits; and he has been intimately 
mingled with men celebrated for their attainments in each of them. 

This work will however be variously estimated by different per¬ 
sons in sympathy with their favourite pursuits. Every one will 
expect more on his own subject than the execution could permit. 
Portable size, moderate price, and generalizations were its essential 
elements. If larger, more costly, or more detailed on particular sub¬ 
jects, it would not have been, as designed, a book of universal 
utility. 

The class of facts have generally been preferred which bear the 
modern name of statistical, since numbers are the least remembered, 
and therefore, in regard to them, an auxiliary is the most required. 
But a succession of such details would have been intolerably dull, 
and the Editor has, therefore, intermingled them with facts more 
piquant to the imagination, so as to produce a diversity of informa¬ 
tion that may often be perused with pleasure in uninterrupted suc¬ 
cession. 

For the same reason, logical analysis and synthesis have been 
avoided, and order, as such, disregarded, except in the juxtaposition 
of similar topicks, and the arrangement into chapters. A readable 
Book of Facts was the object, and it is to be hoped that the execution 
has been such as is best suited to its attainment. 



6 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


In its nature the book is not one of opinion or doctrine. Some 
subjects, however, have extorted inferences, the withholding of which 
would have been to compromise truth, and exhibit a coldness of 
feeling little creditable to the Editor. 

On the Title of the work it may be remarked, that, though it 
limits the contents to a million of facts, yet, in truth, the volume, 
directly or indirectly, contains far more. It is not pretended, how¬ 
ever, that it con tains all facts, since facts are infinite in number, but 
only such as best illustrate the subjects, and as are the most likely to 
become objects of inquiry and reference. Million, in this sense, is 
like the Hebrew word forty, meaning a number undetermined, and 
either a million, or forty, more or less. No generick word like collec¬ 
tion, assemblage, multitude, &c. so aptly expressed the comprehen¬ 
sive extent of the work as the word million; for, besides its literal 
truth, it implies that the book may be used in a million of cases of 
inquiry, and further, that it has claims to be received, in due time, 
into a Million of Families. 

Kensington , March 14, 1832. 


INDEX OF GENERAL HEADS. 


Measures of Capacity 





• 



9 

W eights 




• 


• 

•— 

. 10 

Measures of Length 



• 


• 



12 

Measures of Time 




• 


• 


. 14 

Chronology 



• 


• 



18 

Discoveries 




• 


• 


. 25 

Mathematicks and Physicks 



• 


• 



26 

Specifick Gravities 




• 


• 


i 42 

The Animal Kingdom 





• 



43 

Anatomy and Physiology of Man 




• 


• 


. 66 

The Vegetable Kingdom 



• 


• 



78 

The Mineral Kingdom 




• 


• 


. 89 

Mountains 



• 





101 

Geology 




• 


• 


. 106 

Heat and its Phenomena 



• 


• 



116 

Chymistry . 




• 


• 


. 126 

Opticks .... 



• 





145 

Electricity, &c. 




\ 


• 


. 152 

Astronomy . 



• 


• 



156 

Atmospherical and Aerial Phenomena 




• 


• 


. 169 

Acousticks 



• 


• 



181 

Physical Geography 




• 


• 


. 182 

History and Laws of England 



• 


• 



189 

Ancient History 




• 


• 


. 205 

Modern History 



• 


• 



217 

Ancient and Modern Arms, &c. 




• 


• 


. 222 

Ancient Building and Architecture 



• 


• 



226 

Modern Ditto 



• 


• 



237 

Works of Art . . ; 




• 


• 


. 239 

Literature and Education 



• 


• 



240 

Philosophy . . . : 




• 


• 


. 253 

Political Economy 



• 


• 



272 

A sketch of Jewish History i 




• 


• 


. 280 

A sketch of American History 



• 


• 



285 

History of the Arts 




• 


• 


. 310 

A brief History of American Literature 


• 


• 



319 













THE 


BOOK OF FACTS, 

OR, 

UNIVERSAL COMMONPLACE-BOOK. 


MEASURES OF CAPACITY. 

Measure is length, breadth, and 
thickness, estimated bv known 
lengths, or compared by other known 
quantities: thus there are 12-J-12+12 
=1728 cubicle inches in a cubick foot; 
and 3X3X3=27 cubick feet in a cu¬ 
bick yard. 

The Imperial gallon is 277.274 
cubick inches. A gill, or quarter of a 
pint, is 8f inches. 

The Imperial gallon contains 10 lb. 
avoirdupois of distilled water, weigh¬ 
ed in air, at 62°, with the barometer 
at 30 inches. Two gallons a peck, 
eight a bushel, and eight bushels a 
quarter. 

One English wine gallon is equal 
to .0833111 Imperial gallon. 

One ale gallon=l.017045 Imperial. 
One corn bushel =0.96943 Imperial. 
One Imp. gallon=l.20032 wine gall. 
One Imp. gallon=0.933241 ale gall. 
One Imp. gallon=l.03152 corn gall. 

An Imperial gallon is 4.843452 
litres. 

Heaped measure, per bushel, is 
2815* cubick inches clear. 

The standard bushel kept at Guild¬ 
hall contains 2145.6 cubick inches of 
water, weighing 1131 oz. 14 dwts. 

The Winchester bushel is 18£ 
inches diameter and 8 inches deep, 
containing 2150.42 cubick inches. 

A quarter of corn is the fourth of 
a ton, and eight bushels, or two 
sacks. 

A strike is four pecks. 

1000 ounces of rain water are equal 
to about 7* gallons wine measure, or 
to a cubick foot. 


71b. avoirdupois is a gallon of flour. 

A chaldron of coals is 58f cubick 
feet. 

Twelve wine gallons of distilled 
water weigh 100 lbs. avoirdupois. 

Nineteen cubick inches of distilled 
water at 50°, weigh 10 oz. troy. 

A cubick inch of distilled water at 
62°, in a vacuum, is 252.724 grains. 

The Imperial measure for heaped 
oods contains 80 lbs. avoirdupois of 
istil led water, and is 19£ inches from 
outside to outside at the bottom; the 
heap to be in a cone at least six 
inches high from the outside: three 
making a sack and twelve sacks a 
chaldron, which ought to weigh 28 
cwt. 

The Imperial dry bushel, when not 
heaped, is 2218.192cubick inches; the 
peck 554.548; gallon 277.274, and 

uart 69.3185. The bushel is 8 inches 

eep, and 18.8 wide; with a heap 6 
inches high. 

A tun is 2 pipes, 4 hogsheads, 3 
puncheons, 8 barrels, or 252 gallons. 
A pipe of port is 138 gallons; of 
Lisbon 140; Maderia 110 ; and Sherry 
120. The hogshead of Claret is 57 
gallons, and the aum of Hock 36 
gallons ; Teneriffe 120, and Cape 20. 

A tun of wine is 2 pipes, and each 
pipe 2 hogsheads of 63 gallons. 

A tun of beer is 2 butts, and each 
butt 2 hogsheads of 54 gallons. 

A bushel of wheat is 60 lbs., rye 
53, barley 47, oats 88, peas 64, beans 
63, clover seed 68, rape 48 lbs. 

53 cwt. is a chaldron at Newcastle. 
A keel of 8 Newcastle chaldrons is 
15£ London chaldrons. 






10 WEIGHTS. 


The Imperial corn bushel of 2218. 
192 cubick inches, is to the Winches¬ 
ter of 2150.42, as 32 to 31. 

The Imperial coal bushel of 2816. 
459 inches, is 1£ inches more than 
the old coal bushel of 2814.9. 

The Imperial wine measure is to 
the old measure as 6 to 5; 5 imperial 
gallons being 6 wine gallons and 

tAo th over ' 

The new and old ale measures are 
as 60 to 59. 

To convert old corn measure into 
new, multiply by .96943 or |-t-; wine 
by .83311 or f ; ale by 1.01704 or J li. 

Wood, the fuel of France, is sold 
by the corde of 576 square feet; and 
80 square cordes make what is called 
a journal. 

At 70° the specific gravity of water 
is 0.99913; at 38° is 1.00113; and at 
54° is 1.00064. The difference be¬ 
tween 62° and 39° in a gallon of 
277.276 inches, is one-third of a 
cubick inch. 

A last is a commercial measure, of 
twelve barrels of soap, ashes, her¬ 
rings, &c.; ten quarters of corn, or 
two cart loads; twenty-four barrels 
of gunpowder; twelve sacks of 
wool; and 1700 lbs. of flax or fea¬ 
thers. 

A Scotch pint is four English 
pints. 

A Scotch pint is 105 cubick inches, 
and a wheat farlot 21 £ Scotch pints. 

The Scotch quart 206.8 cubick 
inches. 

A tub of butter is 84 lbs. and a 
firkin 56 lbs. 

A Scotch boll is an English sack. 

A soldier’s canteen contains three 
pints. 

The litre is 61.0279 English cubick 
inches, or 2lth wine pints. 

The &tere , or cubical metre, is 35. 
3171 cubick feet English. 

There are 5452670000 cubical 
yards in a cubick mile. 

A Roman quadrantal was a cube 
containing 80 lbs. of water, or 48 
sectaries and 8 congii. A gower was 
7 pints. 

The Ephah was the sixth part, or 
1747.7 cubick inches, nearly an Eng¬ 
lish cubick foot. 


The Winchester bushel is 35.2466 
litres. The stere iff 35.317 cubick 
feet. 


WEIGHTS. 

Weight is the tendency or force 
with which bodies of various density 
tend to fall towards the earth. 

The standard of weights is the 
cubick inch of distilled water, weigh¬ 
ing 252.458 troy grains; the troy 
pound 5760 grains, or 22.8157 inc. 
The same standard of 7000 troy 
grains makes the pound avoirdupois, 
27. 7274 cubic inches : ten of which, 
or 277.274 being the Imperial gallon; 
a quart 69.32; and a gill, of 5 oz. of 
water, equal 8.664. 

In Troy Weight, 24 grains make 
a pennyweight, (meaning grains of 
wheat) 480 an oz. and 5760 a lb.; or 
20 dwt. an oz. and 12 oz. a lb. 

In Apothecaries’ Weight, 20 
grains make a scruple, 60 a drachm; 
and then as in troy weight, 480 make 
an oz., and 5760 a lb. There are 12 
ounces to the lb., 8 drams to an 
ounce, 3 scruples a dram, and 20 
grains or drops to a scruple. The 
dram is 60 grains. 

In AvoiRntPCis Weight. '6 
drams make an oz. 256 a lb.; 16 oz. 
a lb.; 112 lb. a cwt.; and 20 cwt., 
or 2240 lbs., a ton. 

175 lbs. troy are equal to 144 lbs. 
avoirdupois; and 175 oz. troy are 
equal to 192 oz. avoirdupois. 

80 oz. avoirdupois are equal to 73 
oz. troy; and 14 lbs. avoirdupois to 
17 troy. A troy pound is 13 oz. 2.65 
drams avoirdupois; and a lb. avoir¬ 
dupois is 1 lb. 2 oz. 11 dwt. 16 grs. 
troy. 

The avoirdupois lb. of 7000 grains 
is 453.61 French grammes ; and the 
troy lb., 5760 grains, is 373.14 
grammes. 

One troy lb.=0.822857 Imperial lb. 

One Imp. lb.=1.215271 lb. troy. 

Henry III. enacted that an ounce 
should be 640 dry grains of wheat; 
12 oz. a lb.; 8 lbs. a gallon of wine; 
and eight gallons a London bushel. 
Latterly, the malt liquor measure has 
been 282 inches to the gallon, and the 
wine measure 231. 

7000 grains of water, thermometer 






WEIGHTS. 


62 degrees, and barometer 30 inches, 

are 1 lb. avoirdupois. 

The French gramme is 15.434 
English grains. 

The smaller French weights are in 
tenths, decreasing, as deci , centi , and 
milli grammes. 

The larger are deca , hecato, chilio , 
and mirio grammes , in tenths, in¬ 
creasing. 

The kilo-gramme, or 1000 grammes, 
is equal to 2 lbs. 2 oz. 4 grains avoir¬ 
dupois. 

In Greece, a drachma was 2 dwt. 
16 grains; a minae 1 lb. 1| oz.; a 
talent 67 lbs. 7 oz. 5 dwt. 

The Roman weights were the As, 
equal to twelve ounces, and the uncia 
an ounce. 

The American quintal is 100 lbs. 

The Mysore cutcha seer is 9 oz. 
11J drams. 

A bale of Egyptian cotton is SO lbs., 
of Brazil 160, of Georgian and Sea 
Islands 280, Orleans 300, East India 
300, West India 350 to 400. 

A pack of sheep’s wool is 240 lbs. 

The livre, or French pound, is 500 
grammes, or 7714 grains English, or 
1 lb. 1 oz. 104- drams avoirdupois. 
The quintal, of 100 kilo-grammes, is 
220.486 pounds. 

The Bengal maund is 74 lbs. 10 oz. 
lOf drams avoirdupois ; the seer 1 lb. 
13 oz. 13.866 drams; the chattock 1 
oz. 13.366 drams. The Baza maund 
is 82 lbs. 2 oz. 

A seam of glass is 24 stone of 5 
lbs. each. 

The weight of a cubick inch of dis¬ 
tilled water, in a vacuum is 252.722 
grains ; and in air is 252.456 grains. 

The quintal is ten mirio-grammes, 
or 2 cwt., or 224 lbs., English, 
nearly. 

A sack of wool is 22 stone of 14 
lbs. or 308 lbs. In Scotland, it is 24 
stone of 16 lbs. 

A pack of wool is 17 stone 2 lbs., 
or a horse load. 

A tod of wool is two stone of 14 
lbs. each; and a sack is 13 tod; 12 
sacks is a last, or 4368 lbs. 


_ 11 

56 or 60 lbs. is a truss of hay, old 
or new, and 40 lbs. a truss of straw; 
36 trusses being a load. 

A Spanish quintal is 312 Spanish 
lbs. The arroba is 25 Spanish lbs., 
of 6544 grains each ; and 6 arrobas 
make a quintal. 

The Portuguese arroba contains 
32 Lisbon lbs. of 7005 grains. 

The Venetian mirre contains 30 lbs. 
of 4215 grains. 

The Shippondt of the northern 
nations is, in Sweden, for copper 
320 lbs. of 9211 grains, and for pro¬ 
visions 400 such lbs. At Riga it is 
400 lbs. of 6149 grains. At Ham¬ 
burgh 300 lbs. of 7315 grains. 

100 lbs. English is equal to 112jj lbs. 
of Russia, to 93 lbs. 5 oz. of Ham¬ 
burgh, and to 132 lbs. 11 oz. at Leg¬ 
horn, and 104 lbs. 13 oz. in Portugal, 
and 91 lbs. 8 oz. at Amsterdam. 

The commercial lb. of Amsterdam 
is 7636 grains, and the troy lb. equal 
to 7602 grains. The Dutch stone is 
16 lbs. The Norway lb. is 7833 
grains. The Spanish lb. is 7038 
grains. The Chinese kin is 5802 
grains, or 375-^- French grammes. 

The Turkish lb. is 7578 grains. 
The Danish 6941. The Irish 7774. 
The Naples 4952. The Scotch lb. 
troy 7620.8. The Smyrna lb. 6944. 

A cubick foot weighs— 


Of loose earth or sand . . 95 lbs. 

Of common soil . . .124 

Of strong soil . . .127 

Of clay .... 135 

Of clay and stones . . 160 

Of mason’s work . . . 205 

Of distilled water . . 62.5 

Of pure gold . . .1203.625 

Of pure silver . . . 654.8 

Of cast iron . . . 450.45 

Of steel .... 489.8 

Of lead .... 709.5 

Of platina . . . .1218.75 

Of copper .... 486.75 
Of cork . . • .15 

Of Portland stone . . 157.5 

Of tallow . . • .59 

Of oak .... 73.15 

Of brick . . . .125 

Of crown glass . . . 180.75 

Of fir. 34.375 

Of mahogany . . . 66.4 

Of air. 0.0753 







MEASURES OF LENGTH. 


MEASURES OF LENGTH. 

Measures in length are the dis¬ 
tance of one object from another in 
some agreed standard. 

A line is the 10th of a digit, and 
the 100th of a foot. 

A digit measure is f ths of an inch, 
or 4 barleycorns laid breadthways. 

A hair’s breadth is the 48th of an 
inch. 

A barleycorn is .00'217th of a cu¬ 
bicle inch, or about 460 make a cubick 
inen, or 3 to an inch in length. 

A geometrical pace is 4.4 feet Eng¬ 
lish ; and an English mile contains 
1200, or 1760 yards, or 5280 feet. 

The Paris foot is nine lines shorter 
than the English foot, or 0.91 to 1. 

The Roman foot was 0.915. 

The Rhinland or Leyden foot is 
0.86925 English 

A Scotch mile contains 1500 paces. 

A German mile 4000. A Swedish 
and Danish mile 5000. The Russian 
mile 750 paces. 

A great league in France is 3000 
paces, and a mean league 2500. 

A nautical league is ^\th of a 
degree. 

A hand used for horses is 4 inches. 

A degree of latitude is 69 j- Eng¬ 
lish miles at the equator.— Mudge. 

A nail’s breadth is the 16th of a 
yard, or 2\ inches. 

A surveyor’s chain is 4 poles, or 66 
feet, divided into 100 links of 7.92 
inches. A square chain is 16 poles, 
and 10 square chains are an acre. 

640 acres are a square mile; and 
4840 square yards are an acre, 169.58 
yards each way. 

The Irish acre 7840 square yards. 

A French arpent f ths of an Eng¬ 
lish acre. 

The Scotch acre 1.27 English. 

121 Irish acres are equal to 196 
English. 

48 Scotch acres are equal to 61 
English. 

11 Irish miles are equal to 14 Eng¬ 
lish. 

80 Scotch miles are equal to 91 
English. 


The Turkish dreah, or pik, is 3 
palmi, or 26.41 inches, and the lesser 
pik is 19.03 inches. 

The jaghireis 10.46 English inches. 
A cawney is rather more than an 
acre. 

A hide of land was one plough’s 
work. 

An ox-gang is 15 acres, or as 
much as one ox can plough in a year. 

The long-line adopted in the navy 
is 48 feet. 

A sea league is 3.4536 miles, or the 
20 th of a degree. 

6078 feet are a sea mile. ■ 

A palm is 3 inches. A fathom 6 
feet. 

The French metre is 36.9413 
French inches, or 39.371 English, or 
3.2389jfeet* 

In Greece, a digit was fths of an 
inch, a cubit 13£ inches, and a large 
cubit 18j inches; a pace 2 yards and £ 
an inch, a stadium 201 yards 1 foot 
31 inches; 8| stadia a mile nearly. 
The plethron, 10000 square feet. 

A Bengal coss is 6000 feet, or 1 
mile 240 yards. 

The haut or cubit is 18 inches. 

A baggah of land is 1600 square 
yards, about a third of an acre. 

A span was 10.944 inches. 

Ezekiel’s reed was 10 feet 11-fin¬ 
ches. 

A sabbath day’s journey was 1155 
yards, or about frds of a mile. A 
day’s journey w r as 33| miles. 

The Egyptian cubit, or ardub, was 

21.888 inches. 

The Greek foot was 12J inches. 

The Hebrew foot was 1.212 Eng¬ 
lish feet. The Hebrew cubit 1.817 ; 
the sacred cubit 2 English feet; and 
the great cubit 11 English feet. 

The stadium, 625 feet; and the 
milliarium, 5000 feet. 

The Amsterdam foot is .927 ; and 
the ell 2.233, 

The Berlin foot .992 

The Bologna foot 1.25. 

The Brabant ell 2.268. 

The Brussels foot .95. 

The Chinese imperial foot 1.05. 








MEASURES OF LENGTH. 


The Chinese lis is 629 yards. 

The Turkish foot 1.165. 

The Florence foot .995. 

The Geneva foot 1.919. 

The Hamburgh foot .933. 

The Italian mile 5299 feet. 

The Portugese foot .952. 

The Madrid foot .915. 

The Moscow foot .928. 

The Neapolitan mile 4 German 
miles, or 60th of a degree. 

The Roman palm .733. 

The Roman foot .966. 

The Roman mile -^ th of a degree. 

The geographical or Italian mile is 
1000 geometrical paces, or fths of an 
English mile. 

The Roman braccio is 4 palms. 

The cauna 8 palms. 

The Russian werst is 3508 English 
feet, about fds of a mile. 

The Scotch ell is 37^- inches. 

The Scotch mile 5952feet. 

The Spanish league 4 miles Eng¬ 
lish. 

The Swedish foot 1.073 English 
feet. 

The Venice foot 1.14. 

The Venice ell 2.089. 

The Vienna foot 1.036. 

The Vienna post mile 24888 feet. 

The Wirtemburg foot 11.28. 

The Levant pig is -fths of the 
French ell. The Venetian ell is 
-j^ths of the French ell. 

The candi, of India, is equal to the 
Venetian ell. In Siam, the ken is 
36 inches nearly, and. is divided into 
2 soks; these into 2 keubs ; and each 
keub into 12nions, at fths of an inch. 

3 inches is a palm: 3 palms, or 9 
inches, a span. 5 feet is a pace. 2 
yards is a fathom. 

The German mile is the 15th of a 
degree of latitude, or more than 4£ 
miles English. 

A league is 3 sea miles. 17 Spanish 
leagues is a degree, or about 4 miles, 
which is the Dutch and German 
league. The Persian league, or para- 
sang, is 30 stadia or furlongs. 

The Paris line .0888. 

The Paris ell 43.9 inches. 

The French toisedteet 4.733 inches. 

13 


_13 

A French league ^ th of a degree. 

The French metre 39.37079 inches. 
The metre is 443.2959 lines, and.513- 
074 of a French toise. 8 chiliometres 
is about 5 miles English. 1000 feet 
is nearly 305 metres. 

The metre is the ten millionth part, 
of the quadrant of the earth from the 
equator to the north pole. It differs 
slightly from the length of a. pendu¬ 
lum which, in the latitude of London, 
vibrates seconds in a vacuum, at the 
level of the sea, where it is 39.1393 
inches ; therefore, the metre is only 
.23 of an inch longer than our pendu¬ 
lum. 

The millemetre , or thousandth 
part, .03937 inches English. 

The centimetre .39371. 

The decimetre 3.93708. 

The decameter is ten times the me¬ 
tre. 

The hecatometre 100 times. 

The chiliometre 1000 times; and 
the miriometre 10,000 times.' 

The are is 3.95 English perches. 

An inch English is 2.54 centime¬ 
tres; a yard is 0.91438 metres; and 
a mile is 1609.3149 metres. 

The French metre is the ten mil¬ 
lionth of a quadrant of the earth, 
taken as 6217.857 English miles, or 
32809167 feet, and a mean degree of 
latitude at 69.0429. A centesimal de¬ 
gree is 54 minutes. A league at 25 
to a degree is 2.7617 miles. A post 
league 2000 toises, or 2.3 miles Eng¬ 
lish ; a toise being 6 feet 6f inches 
English. The pied one-sixth of the 
toise; and the aune 3 feet Ilf inches 
English. 

A degree at the equator is 365101 
feet, or 69.148 miles, or 69^ nearly. 
In latitude 66.20 Maupertius mea¬ 
sured a degree of latitude, in 1737, 
and made it 69.403; and Swanberg, 
in 1803, made it 69.292. At the equa¬ 
tor, in 1744, four astronomers made 
it 68.732; and Lambton, in lat. 12, 
68.743. Mudge, in England, makes 
it 69.148. Cassini, in France, in 1718 
and 1740, made it 69.12, and Bipt 
68.769; while a recent measure in 
Spain makes it but 68.63, less than 
at the equator; and contradicts all 
the others proving the earth to be a 
prolate spheroid, which was the 
opinion of Cassini, Bernouilli, Euler, 
and others, while it has more gene- 






14 


MEASURES OF TIME. 


rally been regarded as an oblate 

spheroid. 

Degrees of longitude are to each 
other in length, as the cosines of 
their latitudes. For every 10° they 
are as follow:— 


Equator, 
10 ° 

20 
30 
40 
50 
55 
60 
70 
80 


69.2 

68.15 

65.27 

59.93 

53.1 

44.48 

39.69 

24.6 

23.67 

12.02 


The diameter of the equatorial cir¬ 
cle is 41837494.8 feet; and its cir¬ 
cumference 131436444 feet, which, in 
a sidereal day, gives a velocity of 1525 
feet per second of rotation. 

Then 1525X4=6100 for the veloci¬ 
ty of the surface of the whole sphere, 
which, X 16.08728, the mean force 
per second, gives 98132 feet per sec¬ 
ond for the orbit velocity of the earth; 
and this multiplied by 31558151 sec¬ 
onds in a sidereal year, gives a mean 
orbit of 586527362.6 miles; and a 
mean radius, or distance from the 
earth to the sun, of 93348800 miles. 
The aphelion distance is 94918500 
miles, and the perihelion 91779000. 

The pendulum which vibrates se¬ 
conds 39.1393 inches at London, is 
the standard for the British mea¬ 
sures. 1 mile is equal to 1618.833 
such pendulums. 


MEASURES OF TIME. 


Time being mentally measured by 
the impressions of new ideas. 

Absolute time, independent »of the 
feelings of individuals, is measured 
by certain regular motions, as the 
rotation of the earth, the swing of 
a pendulum, the fall of a body, the 
revolutions of the moon round the 
earth, or the earth round the sun. 

The tropical year is 365 days 5 
hours 48 minutes 51.6 seconds ; but 
the sidereal year, or return to the 
same star is 365 days 6 h. 9 m. 11°; 
but as the line of apsides or aphelion 
point advances 655 seconds, the or¬ 
bit is dSnpleted in 365 days 6 h. 15 m. 
20 s., dnd this is called the anoma- 
listick year. 

The Chaldeans made the sidereal 
year 365 days 6 h. 14 m., or one mi¬ 
nute 49 seconds more than our pre¬ 
sent year, and the tropical year 365 
days 5h. 49 m. 30 s., being 38 m. 4 s. 
more than ours. 

If Hypparchus was right in his 
measure of the tropical year, it is 11. 
2" less than in his time. The Brah¬ 
mins made it 1 m. 43 s. more than 
now. 

The precession of the equinoxes 
is performed in 25868 years; and 
the revolution of the line of apsides 
in 20931, or one deg. 43 m. 10" in 
a century. The precession of the 
equinoxes, is 50' 25" per annum, or 
1° 52' 45" in a century, or the 360° 
in 25868 years. 

Leap year is the year which di¬ 
vides evenly by four; but the year 
1900 will not be leap year, to make 
up for the odd minutes gained be¬ 
tween the astronomical and com¬ 
puted year, as 365 days. 


Time is best defined as the suc¬ 
cession of motion and phenomena, 
independent of relative human per¬ 
ceptions. 

Time is measured by man by the 
impressions of successive ideas, and 
these diminish in a ratio of their 
own increase; consequently, time 
appears less as men advance in age, 
or are variously employed. At ten, a 
year seems to be twice as long as at 
twenty; three times as at thirty; 
four times less at forty; five times 
at fifty; and six limes at sixty: cir¬ 
cumstances of employment and po¬ 
sition being the same. Hence a 
month employed in travelling seems 
equal to three of usual pursuits. 


The astronomical equinoxes are on 
the 21st of March and 21st of Sep¬ 
tember, and the sun is in the tropics 
on the 21st of December or June, 
Quarter days in civil reckoning are 
March 25, June 24, Sept. 29, and 
Dec. 25, being festivals of the Cath¬ 
olic Church. 

The Synodical lunar month of her 
departure from the sun’s centre to 
the return, or from full to full, is 29 
days 12 hours 44 m. 12 s., and was 
the universal month of the ancients, 
twelve being accounted a year. 

The difference between the solar 
and lunar year is 10£-§-g- days. 

The sun and moon return to the 











_ __ MEASURES 

same relative positions every 223 lu¬ 
nations; according to the ancient 
Chaldeans in 6585 days 8 hours. 
Our modern tables make it 17.29" 
less. 

The Eastern nations, where the 
day varies little, reckon the day from 
sunrise. The Romans reckoned as 
we do, from midnight. 

Christian nations assign thirty 
days to April, June, September, 
and November, thirty-one to other 
months, and twenty-eight to Feb¬ 
ruary, making three hundred and 
sixty-five; but three hunted and 
sixty-six in Leap-year, when Febru¬ 
ary is twenty-nine. 

The Romans added the day in 
Leap-year on the sixth of the cal¬ 
ends of March, making two sixths 
or bis sextus , and hence the word 
Bissextile. 

The astronomical day is the time 
which elapses from the sun’s being 
on the meridian of a place till his re¬ 
turn, divided into twenty-four hours 
of sixty minutes. And astronomers 
begin the day at the departure of the 
sun from the meridian of the place, 
counting twelve hours till midnight, 
p. a. or after; and twelve hours from 
midnight till noon a. m. or before: 
their day after twelve at night being 
a day later than civil reckoning , 
which begins a new day at twelve 
at night, and reckons from twelve 
at night to twelve the next night. 

As the earth advances in its orbit 
61' 9.9", when in its perihelion, and 
only 5? 10.7", when in its aphe¬ 
lion, while it returns the same me¬ 
ridian to the sun, that meridian ar¬ 
rives at the same fixed star in twen¬ 
ty-three hours 56' 41" or 3' 559" less; 
others make it twenty-three hours 
56' 34" and 3' 56.6". 

Sidereal days are always the 
same, and accord with a true clock; 
but owing to the unequal velocity, as 
expressed, of the earth in its or¬ 
bit in the perihelion and aphelion, 
the sun’s return to the meridian va¬ 
ries; and also as the earth’s path is 
inclined to the axis of rotation, the 
solar days vary. Owing to the first 
cause, the extreme difference is 7' 39" 
on March 21, and 6' 5" on May 6; 0 on 
July 1, making the sun slower than 
the clock; but owing to the obliqui¬ 
ty it is 0 on March 21; 9' 53" on May 
6th, and 0 June 22, making the sun 
faster than the clock. The combi- 


OF TIME _15 

nation of both causes produces the 
table of equation of time by which 
true clocks ought to be kept faster 
or slower than the meridian sun or 
a sun dial, called apparent time, and 
the other true or mean time. 

As the earth moves forward in its 
orbit 59' 8.3", .while it turns on its 
axis, any place arrives at a fixed star 
3' 56. 6", before it arrives again at the 
centre of the sun, called twenty-four 
hours; hence the sidereal day is but 
23 h. 56’ 3.4", which is the real pe¬ 
riod of revolution. 

Hence, in 365 solar days, the earth 
turns 366 times on its axis, and by 
this exact quantity it gains in its or¬ 
bit with reference to the sun and stars 
in every revolution, and hence the 
precession of the equinoxes. For 
as the orbit is caused by the sun, 
and the equinoxes have reference 
to the sun and not to the stars, 
so the equinoxes fall back 24,890 
miles, or in space 50.3", with refer¬ 
ence to the stars. Every other body 
like the earth turns once on its axis 
by going round a central body, and 
this therefore is the sole cause of the 
equinoxial points. 

The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and 
Jews, began their civil year from tho 
autumnal equinox. The Persians, 
Greeks, Romans, and the English 
till 1752, began the year at the ver¬ 
nal equinox. Thence to make dates 
agree with those of other nations, 
between January and Lady-day, our 
writers used to put tw'o dates, as 

1708 

Feb. 10,-- The bottom date be- 

1709 

ing from Jan. 1, and the upper that 
from the previous Lady-day. 

Sidereal davs are always 23 h. 56' 
3.4" ; but as the axis of the earth is 
inclined to the orbit, and the earth 
moves faster in the winter than in 
the summer, the clocks which mea¬ 
sure equal time do not agree with 
the sun. A clock and a sun dial will 
therefore vary as under. 

March 21, clock too fast 7' 35" ; 
April 5, do. 2 55" ; April 20, June 13, 
Sept. 5, Dec. 25, they are equal. 
When the sun is in Libra and Scor¬ 
pio, or in October and November, the 
difference is from ten minutes to 1G* 
18", and the clock ought to be so 
much faster than the dial. 

The difference of velocity makes 
the dial faster than the clock, while 





16 MEASURES OF TIME. 


the earth is moving from its perihe¬ 
lion on January 1, to the aphelion 
July 1; and on the contrary, the di¬ 
al is slower from July 1 to January 
1. But the obliquity makes the dial 
faster from March 21 to June 22; 
and from Sept. 22 to Dec. 21, and 
slower from June 22 to Sept. 22, and 
from Dec. 21 to March 21. The 
union of both produces the common 
equation table as under, showing to 
the nearest minute how much a true 
clock should be faster or slower than 
the sun. 


g 

O 

gw 

g 

O 

gw 

s • 


p '"5 

O 


p a 


Ul 

P * 


M 

p * 

Zfl 


CD 5 
GO 

00 


CD 5 
UJ M 

Jan. 

1 

4 

Aug. 

9 

50 


3 

50 


15 

4 g 


5 

6° 


20 

3?v 


7 

7 


24 

2 p 5 


9 

8p* 


28 

1* 


12 

9 £ 


31 

0.3 


15 

10* 


— 

— 


18 

n~ 

Sept. 

3 

1 


21 

125 

6 

20 


25 

13 r* 


9 

3 J 


31 

14 af 


12 

4 ^ 

Feb. 

10 

15 at 


15 



21 

14 § 


18 

6| 


27 

13* 


21 


Mar. 

4 

12 


24 

8^ 


8 

11 


27 

9 


12 

10 


30 

10 s 


15 

9 

Oct. 

3 

11 5* 


19 

8 


6 

10 

12* 


22 

7 


13 c 


25 

6 


141 

14? 


28 

50 


19 

15 

Apr. 

1 

4o“| 


27 

16 

4 

3*- 

Nov 

151 

15 


7 

2£> 


20 

14- 


11 

IS 


24 

139 


15 

0? 


27 12 § 
30 Ilf 


19 

1 

Dec. 

2 

10§- 


24 

29 


5 

9^ 


30 

3g 


7 

85 

May 

13 

4 ?r 


9 

7 s. 

29 

3f- 


11 

6§ 

June 

5 

2? 


13 

5^ 


10 

1? 


16 

4=f 


15 

O' 


18 

20 

22 

3cc 

?P 


20 

io 



25 

2° 


24 

0 


29 

3** 


_ 

— 

July 

5 

4 p 5 


26 

iw 


11 

5 “ 


28 

2“ 


28 

6$ 


30 

35 


The Pendulum for true and exact 
measuring of time w r as a suggestion 
of Galileo, in consequence of his ob¬ 
serving the oscillations of a chan¬ 
delier in a cathedral. Every oscilla¬ 
tion, whether long or short, of the 
same pendulum, is performed in the 
same time. A pendulum which vi¬ 
brates seconds at London, ought to 
be 39.139 inches nearly, and the 
length of pendulums for less or 
greater times is as the square of 
the times: thus, for half a second it 
would be the square of J, or £ X i = 
39.139 

i; so that - = 9.78425 inches 

4 

is the length of a half second’s pendu¬ 
lum at London. 

At St. Thomas’, in lat. 25', the 
second’s pendulum is 39.02069 ; and 
at the Gallipagos, in lat. 0° 32', it is 
39.01717 inches. 

At Maraham, in 2° 32', it is 39. 
01197. 

Hence Capt. Sabine calls the equa¬ 
tor 39.0152 inches, and he calculates 
it to be at the Poles 39.21765; con¬ 
sidering the ellipticity as 239.1; 
which La Place makes 306.75. 

The highest latitude yet taken is 
79° 50', and here it is 39.21464. At 
Greenland in 74° 32', 39.20328; at 
Hammerfest, 70° 40', 39.19512; and 
at Unst, in the Orkneys, in 60.45, it 
is 39.17145.— Biot. 

At Paris, 48° 50', it is 39.12843; at 
London, 51° 31' 39.13908; and at 
Bordeaux, 44° 50' 39.11282; and Cler¬ 
mont, lat. 45° 47", 39.11313, giving 
39.11813 for the mean latitude of 45°, 
which Sabine makes 39.11654. 

A body therefore falls at the equa¬ 
tor in a second of time 16.045258 feet; * 
in the lat. of 45° per Sabine 16.08645; 
at London, 51° 31', in 16.0963; and 
at Paramatta, in 33° 48', 16.0703 feet; 
or per mean as above 16.08728. 

The time of a complete oscillation 
in a cycloid is to the time a body 
would fall through the axis, as 3.1416 
to 1. Then the fall of a body in a 
second is 3.1416 2 , X half the length 
of a pendulum which vibrates sec¬ 
onds. 

Chronometers, for nautical and 
astronomical purposes are now made 
with such precision, that they do not 
vary from true time more than two or 
three seconds in a year, or, in other 


















MEASURES OF TIME. 17 


words, they are as perfect as any in¬ 

strument by which observations can 
be made on the. heavenly bodies. The 
20,000Z. offered by the Board of Lon¬ 
gitude was given to Harrison. 

The best watches and timepieces 
are<made in London, but many at 
Liverpool and Coventry, also at 
Paris and Geneva. The first decided 
improvements were by Harrison, 
Arnold, and Earnshaw, each of 
whom received rewards from the 
Board. Brequet is the most skilful 
maker of nautical timepieces in 
France. There are from two to 
three hundred master watch and 
clock makers, employing three or 
four thousand hands in the parishes 
of Clerkenwell and St. Luke’s, on 
the north side of London. A single 
watch passes through fifty different 
hands. The movements are chiefly 
made at Prescot, in Lancashire. 

The extreme variation of two 
watches at Greenwich in 12 months, 
was from .9" to 2.8' in a temperature 
from 39° to 82°. 

As the earth of360 degrees of longi¬ 
tude turns in twenty-four hours, 
every hour of sixty minutes of time, 
is equal to fifteen degrees, and every 
degree equal to four minutes of time, 
every minute of time equal to 
69.748 

-=17.287 miles at the equator, 

4 

or 1525 feet per second. Degrees of 
longitude in different latitudes are 
as 1000: to the cosine of the lati¬ 
tude :: 69.148: length of degree. The 
cosine of five degrees is 996; of 10°, 
985; of 15°, 966; of 20°, 940; of 25°, 
906; of 30°, 866; of 40°, 766; of 45°, 
707; of 50°, 643; of 51°, 31', 622; of 
60°, 500; of 70°, 342 ; of 80°, 174; 
and of 85°, 87; consequently, for 
51.31, the latitude of London, 69.148 
X 622 and -f- by 1000, gives forty- 
three miles for a degree of longi¬ 
tude ; and therefore lOf is equal to 
a minute of time in this parallel. 

In India a day is divided into 60 
Ghurries, a Ghurry into 60 Puls, a 
Pul into 60 Prans, and a Pran into 
10 Tas, in 2-5ths of a second. 


visual circle must go round seven 
times in a second. 

Fewer than 30 vibrations in a 
second give no sound, and when the 
vibrations exceed 7520 in a second, 
the tones cease to be discriminated. 

10 beats of a healthy pulse is equal 
to 9 seconds. 

The sun is 7 days 16 hours 51 min. 
longer in the northern signs than in 
the southern. 

The Mahomedans for 1830 begin 
June 22; 1831, June 12; 1832, May 
31; 1833, May 21; 1834, May 10; 
1835, April 29; and going back will 
be in 1895 on June 22 again; and in 
another sixty-five years, or 1960, 
begin the year on June 26th. 

The Roman lustra were periods of 
5 years; and the Greek olympiads 
periods of 4 years; and the first com¬ 
menced in 776 B. C. The Metonick 
cycle was 19 years, intended to be 
equivalent to the Chaldean period. It 
was afterwards adopted as the gold¬ 
en number for Easter. 

The Hegira, or Flight, took place 
July 16, 622, and is the Mahomedan 
Era. Their year is 12 lunar months, 
or 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes; 
and eleven days being lost, a year 
must be allowed every thirty-three, 
to reconcile their dates with ours. 

The periodical month of the Turks 
and Arabs, or sidereal period of the 
Moon is 27 d. 7 h. 43 m. 48 sec. The 
synodical month, or return to the 
conjunction of the Sun is 29 d. 12 h. 
44 m. 3 sec. 11 thirds. 

The Jews began the year in March, 
and the months were Nisan, Zif, 
Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tisri, 
Bui, Cisleu, Tibeth, Shebat, Adar. 
The Sabbath, or seventh day is 
Saturday. The days and nights, 
from sunrise and sunset, were di¬ 
vided into twelve equal parts or 
hours, 1, 2,3, &c. The night watches 
were three hours each, from sunset to 
sunrise. The months were lunar, 
or 30 and 29 days, and they intro¬ 
duced an extra month every two or 
three years. The day commences 
and ends at sunset. 


The beats in an hour of a common 
second’s clock are 3600, and 17280 a 
common watch; but second watches 
beat 18,000 times, or 5 per second. 

A luminous point to produce a 
B 2 


The Jewish‘months were alter¬ 
nately 29 and 30 days, and their 
year of twelve lunations 354 days. 
Their year commences with the ver¬ 
nal equinox. To recover the four 





GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


18 _ 

days they intercalate a whole month 

after every two or three years, 
following their twelfth month, or 
Adar; and they call this extra 
month, ve-adar. 

The Jewish day commences at 
six in the evening, or sunset, and 
continues till the same hour on the 
following evening. 

Their civil year commences with 
the new moon near the vernal equi¬ 
nox, in the month called Tisri, of 30 
days, corresponding with part of 
September and part of October. 

The year 1829 was the Jewish 
year 5589, and ended Sept. 27, be¬ 
ginning Sept. 9,1828. 

The Mahometan year in 1829 was 
1244, and ended July 2, beginning 
July 14. 

The Persians give names to every 
day in the month, just as we give 
them to days of the week. 

Saturday, the 7th day, is, by the 
Arabs, called Sabt. And Monday is 
called Jama, in all the eastern lan¬ 
guages. 

St. David’s Day is March 1; St. 
Patrick’s, March 17; St. George’s, 
April 23; and St. Andrew’s, Nov. 
30; St. Deny’s, Oct. 9. 

Law proceedings preserve the Ro¬ 
man names of the days, as Dies So¬ 
lus, L/unce, Martis, Mercurii, Jovis, 
Veneris, and Saturni, derived from 
the Roman deities. But in ordinary 
use, the names are derived from the 
Saxon or Teutonickdeities, the Sun, 
Moon, Tuesco , Woden, Thor , Friga, 
and Saturn. 

The months, or lunar periods, are 
Roman; and September, October, 
November, and December, were so 
called when the Roman year began 
in March. 

April is so called from Aperit, the 
Spring. 

As the orbits of the planets com¬ 
plete their seasons, their periods are 
taken to be their years; hence Mer¬ 
cury has nearly four years in ours; 
Yenus |ds; Mars is nearly 4 times 
as long; Jupiter 12 times; Saturn 
30; Herschel 83; and more distant 
planets longer. 

September, &c. were the 7th, &c. 
month of the year of Romulus. 


From the spring to the 

summer solstice is 92d. 21h. 45' 
From the summer to the 
autumnal equinox 93d. 13h. 35' 
Northern signs. 

From the autumnal to 
the winter solstice 89d. 161/. 47' 
From the winter to the 

spring equinox 89d. lh. 42 

Southern signs. 


GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 

The Dominical Letter is the Sun¬ 
day letter of the year, A being al¬ 
ways taken as January 1; and A, 

B, C, D, E, F, G, being the Domini- 
cals. The 52 weeks give but 364 
days, instead of 365; the Dominical 
letter, therefore, falls back one in 
every succeeding year, and two 
when 366 days, or in leap-year. 

To find the Golden Number, or 
year of the Lunar Cycle, add one to 
the date and divide by 19, then the 
quotient is the number of cycles 
since Christ, and the remainder is 
the Golden Number. 

The Cycle of the Sun is the 28 
years before the days of the week 
return to the same days of the 
month. It is found by adding 9 to 
the date of the year, and dividing by 
28; the quotient is the number of 
cycles, and the remainder is the 
number of the cycle wanted. 

The Epact is the moon’s age on 
the 1st of January. A year is 12 
moons and 11 days. To determine 
this from 1800 to 1900, substract 1 
from the Golden Number, found as 
above, multiply by 11, and divide by 
30, and the remainder is the moon’s 
age for January 1. 

To find the moon’s age on any 
day, add the epact of the year, the 
epact of the month, and the day of 
the month together; if less than 29§, 
it is the moon’s age, if more take 
29i from it. The epact of the month 
—0 for January, 2 for February, 1 
for March, and 3, 4, &c. to 10 from 
April to December. 

The time of the moon’s southing 
is four-fifths of an hour later every 
day from the last new moon. 

Easter is the first Sunday after the 
first full moon that occurs after the 
21st of March: to find it add 6 to the • 







GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


epact, and substract from 50, or if 

tne sum is above 30, substract the 
remainder, and the difference is the 
day of the full moon, counting from 
after March 1; this is called the 
Easter limit, and Easter Sunday is 
the following Sunday. To fix the day 
of the month add 4 to the number 
of the dominical letter for the year 
and substract the sum from the Eas¬ 
ter limit; then take this remainder 
from any multiple of 7 greater than 
the said remainder, and add the new 
remainder to the Easter limit, and 
the sum will be the day on which 
Easter Sunday falls in March, if less 
than 31, or in April if more than 31. 

Epiphany, or 12th Day, celebrates 
the arrival of the wise men of the 
East. 

Plough Monday is the end of 
Christmas. 

The purification, or Candlemas 
celebrates the Jewish ceremony of 
the presentation of the Mother of 
Jesus. 

Quadragesima Sunday is the first 
Sunday in Lent, Septuagesima is the 
Sunday before, and Qumquagesima 
precedes. 

Ash Wednesday is the day which 
commences the forty days of Lent, 
when for four days the Popes sprinkle 
ashes. 

Lady-Day the day of the Virgin’s 
miraculous conception. 

Palm Sunday celebrates Christ’s 
entrance into Jerusalem. 

Maunday Thursday when kings 
give alms, &c. to the poor. 

Good Friday celebrates the cruci¬ 
fixion. 

Easter Sunday celebrates the re¬ 
surrection. 

Ascension-day is forty days after 
Easter Sunday. 

Whit-Sunday is forty-nine days 
after Easter Sunday, and also the 
day of Pentecost. 

Trinity Sunday is the next after 
Whit-Sunday. 

Lammas was an ancient quarter 
day, according with Whitsuntide, 
Martinmas, and Candlemas. 

Michaelmas is a festival in honour 
of Michael and the Angels, recorded 
in the Revelations, and an angel 
much spoken of by Magicians. 


19 

All Saints is a day of prayer for 
saints who have no special days. 

Advent Sunday is that which is 
nearest to St. Andrew’s day. 

Christmas celebrates the i irth of 
Christ. 

St. Stephen’s and the Holy Inno¬ 
cents celebrate the massacre of the 
first martyr and the children by 
Herod. 

These and other days, to the num¬ 
ber of 300, besides Sundays, used to 
be celebrated by the Catholic Church, 
and being identified with the cus¬ 
toms of the nation, have been pre¬ 
served in the Angelical Church, 
though they are unknown and un¬ 
noticed by Dissenters. They fill up 
a column in the Almanacks, and 
they are so numerous in Spain, &c. 
as to render 300 days mass or holi¬ 
days. 

The Christian JEra was first 
adopted so late as the sixth century 
in tne reign of Justinian; and hence 
the various difficulties of fixing it 
with precision: but it is generally 
considered as commencing in the 
year 4004 from the creation of 
Adam. 

The Solar Cycle is a period of 28, 
when the days of the week and 
month again coincide. 

The Cycle of Indiction was 15, 
and began 3 B. C. 

The three cycles, 19, 28, and 15, 
multiplied, produce 7980 changes, af¬ 
ter which period they return in the 
same order as before; and this is 
called the Julian Period. The year 
1 of Christ is 4714 of this imaginary 
period. 

The Epact is the eleven days which 
the solar year exceeds twelve luna¬ 
tions. 

Jesus Christ is believed to have 
been born in the 43d year of Augus¬ 
tus, when Lentulus and Piso were 
consuls, in the 4th of the 194th 
Olympiad, and 4004 or 4005 from 
Adam. 

Easter is a festival which the early 
Christians kept on the same dav as 
the Jewish Passover, and others kept 
it on the first Sunday after the first 
full moon in the year; but it is now 
kept on the Sunday which follows 
the full moon after the 20th or 21st 
of March. 





20 GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


Chronologers adopt the following 
epochs:— 

Creation...4004B.C. 

Deluge .2348 

Calling of Abraham .1921 

Argonautic Expedition • • • • 1225 

Destruction of Troy .1184 

1st Olympiad . 776 

Building of Rome . 753 

Nabonaesar •• •. 747 

The Seleucidae. 312 

The battle of Actium. 38 

Dioclesian... 284A.C. 

The chief epochs of Jewish chro¬ 
nology, according to received au¬ 
thorities, are as under:— 

Creation of Adam*.4004 B.C. 

Deluge ..2348 

Death of Abraham.1821 

Drowning of Pharaoh • • • • 1491 

Death of Joshua.1443 

Death of David.1015 

Division of the kingdom 
between the ten tribes 

and two. 975 

Dispersion of the ten tribes 721 

Captivity of the two. 606 

Return of the two from 

Babylon . 536 

Death of Judas Maccabeus 161 
United to the Roman Em¬ 
pire . 63 

The Alphonsine Tables make the 
creation 6934 B.C. 


5492, and the latter, 16 years less 

than the Greek Church, is still used 
by some Eastern Churches. 

The modern Jews date the Crea¬ 
tion 3760i B. C., and the year A. D. 
added gives the Jewish year; thus, 
1830 A. D. is 5690 Jewish. 

The Julian period is merely the 
arithmetical product of three cycles. 
It is in chronology like a balance 
wheel in mechanics. The multi¬ 
plier is 7980, and our era begins in 
its 4713th year. 

The early Christians, till the era 
of the birth of Christ was estimated, 
dated from the accession of Diocle¬ 
sian in 284, called the era of Martyrs. 
The Coptic Christians Still adopt it, 
beginning the year on the day of 
Dioclesian, Aug. 29, or in the month 
Thoth. 

The era of the Seleucidae, 311 B.C., 
of Alexander 323 B. C., and of the 
Battle of Actium 31 B. C., of the Cae¬ 
sars 38 B. C., of Tyre 125, of Abra¬ 
ham 2016, and of Antioch 49, were 
also used by some early writers. 

The Hindoo era of the Caliyug be¬ 
gan 3101 B. C. or 750 years before 
the Deluge in 2348, and they count 
their months by the progress of the 
sun through the zodiac. The Sa- 
moat begins 57 B. C., and the Saca 
77 A. C. All used. 


The period from Adam to the 
Flood, is by the Hebrew version 
1656 years; the Samaritan 1307; 
the Septuagint 2262; and Josephus 
1556. 

Chronologists distinguish dates 
and epochs by letters, as A. M. Anno 
Mundi; A. C. Anti Christi, or B. C. 
before Christ; and A. D. Anno Do¬ 
mini ; or A. C. after Christ. 

A.U. C., ab urbe conditor, from the 
building of Rome, 753 B. C. Greek 
epochs are marked Olyrn., meaning 
the number of the Olympiad, which 
began 776, in periods of four years, 
beginning from our July, or their 
Hecatombeon. Hence the year 0 of 
Christ answers to the 4th year of the 
194th Olympiad. 

The Greek Church date the Crea¬ 
tion 5508 years B. C., and begin the 
year in March. 

The early fathers placed the year 
of Creation 5502 B C, and added the 
year A. D. to it. Others made it 


The cycle of Jupiter is 60 years, 
or Sexagenary, and they are now in 
the 35th year of the 84th cycle, every 
year having a proper name. 

The Chinese adopt also the Sexa¬ 
genary cycle of 60 years, giving a 
name to each year. Seventy-five 
cycles have elapsed, and they are 
now in the 76th, the era commencing 
in 2700 B. C. or 350 before the De¬ 
luge. It was established by the Em¬ 
peror Hevang-te , and is also adopted 
by the Japanese. 

The Mexican era began in 1090, 
A. C., and their year was correctly 
astronomical. 

The epoch of the Mosaic creation 
is fixed by the Samaritan Penta¬ 
teuch at 4700 years B. C. The Sep¬ 
tuagint makes it 5872. The authors 
of the Talmud make it 5344; and 
different chronologers, to the num¬ 
ber of one hundred and twenty, 
make it vary from the Septuagint 
date to 3268. Dr. Hales fixes it at 
5411; but the Catholic church adopt- 
























GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 21 


ed the even number 4000, and sub¬ 
sequently, a correction as to the 
birth of Christ adds four years • 
therefore, it is now generally consid¬ 
ered as 4004 years, which agrees with 
the modern Hebrew text. The mod¬ 
ern Jews call this the year 5590, 
which carries the commencement to 
the year 3761, B. C. 

The year 1330 corresponds to the 
year 6543 of the Julian period. 

Since the first Olympiad 2606 ; 

Since the foundation of Rome 
2593; 

Since the era of Nabonassar 2578. 

The following are the most memo¬ 
rable events in Jewish and other 
histories, reckoned backward from 


the birth of Christ: 

The Deluge 2348 

Babylon built 2247 

Kingdom of Egypt founded 2183 

Birth of Abraham 1993 

Semiramis flourished 1990 

Argos founded 1856 

Sesostris flourished 1722 

Death of Joseph 1635 

Moses bom 1571 

Athens founded 1556 

Cadmus founded Thebes 1493 

Moses died 1451 

Tyre and Sidon rivals 1448 

The first Olympic games 1443 

The Argonautic Expedition 1263 

The P yramids buil t 1250 

Troy taken 1209 

Codrus, King of Athens 1069 

David, King of Israel 1053 

Solomon’s Temple finished 1004 

Homer and Hesiod flourished 907 

Death of Lycurgus 873 

The first Olympiad 776 

Rome founded 753 

Samaria taken 721 

The Pentateuch founded by Hil- 
kiah 625 

Nebuchadnezzar flourished 600 

Solon and Thales flourished 594 

Jerusalem taken and destroyed 587 
Cyrus became king of Persia 559 

Babylon taken by Cyrus 538 

The Tarquins expelled 509 

The battle of Marathon 490 

Aristides banished 484 

The sea-fight at Sal amis 480 

Herodotus flourished 445 

Phidias flourished 440 

The Peloponnesian war 431 

Death of Pericles and Anaxa¬ 
goras 428 


Death of Socrates 400 

Rome taken by- the Gauls 335 

The Death of Plato 348 

Alexander destroyed Thebes 335 

Axlexander built Alexandria 332 

Alexander died at Babylon 324 

Aristotle and Demosthenes died 322 
Praxiteles died 288 

The Alexandrian Library found¬ 
ed 283 

The Death of Epicurus 270 

The first Punic war 264 

End of the first Punic war 242 

Romans conquered all Italy 226 

The Battle of Cannae 216 

The Death of Archimedes 212 

Jerusalem taken by Antiochus 170 

Persius defeated 167 

Judas Maccabeus flourished 166 

The last Punic war 149 

Carthage destroyed 146 

Death of Tiberius Gracchus 133 

Athens taken by Sylla 86 

Sylla perpetual Dictator 82 

Syria conquered by Pompey 64 

Caesar landed in Britain 55 

Gaul conquered 51 

Caesar made Dictator 49 - 

Pompey killed 47 

Caesar lulled 44 

Cicero killed 43 

Battle of Actium 31 

Death of Horace 8 

Birth of Christ 0 


I have taken the year of the Flood 
after Usher and Blair, but the Sep- 
tuagint makes it 3426; Josephus 
3146; the Samaritan 2998; and the 
modern Jews 2104. Herodotus and 
the Greeks notice none of these Jew¬ 
ish periods, but they mention a de¬ 
luge in Attica in the reign of Ogyges, 
in 1764, 500 years after the other; 
and various notices are taken of a 
deluge 250 years afterwards in Thes¬ 
saly, when Deucalion fled to Athens. 

There is also some uncertainty 
about the epoch of the birth of 
Christ, and whether he was cruci¬ 
fied in the 15th, 16th, or 19th year 
of Tiberius. The early fathers as¬ 
signed but one year to the period of 
his public preaching, others two, and 
Eusebius made it three and a half; 
and if so, that he lived till the 19th 
of Tiberius. The chronology was 
not inquired into till long after the 
events; and the Christian festivals 
appear to have been fixed aStrologi- 
cally. The feast of the Virgin Mary 
being fixed on the day the sun en 
ters Aries; that of John the Baptist 





22 GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


on entering Cancer; that of Michael 
on entering Libra; and that of Jesus 
on entering Capricorn, being the four 
cardinal points. So they fixed the 
other saints’ days on the day the sun 
entered the other signs; St. Paul on 
entering Aquarius; Matthew on en¬ 
tering Pisces; Mark on entering 
Taurus; Corpus Christi on entering 
Gemini; St. James on entering Leo; 
St. Bartholomew on entering Virgo; 
Simon and Jude on entering Scor¬ 
pio. This, at least, is the opinion of 
Hewlett and others, and the days 
correspond, allowing for the preces¬ 


sion of the equinoxes. 

Death of Augustus A. C. 14 

Death of Ovid and Livy 17 

Pilot, Governour of Juaea 27 

Sejanus put to death 31 

Jesus Christ crucified 33 

Death of Tiberius 37 

Claudius succeeded Caligula 41 

Claudius visited Britain 43 

Nero succeeded Claudius 54 

Boadicea defeated 61 

Seneca and Lucan put to death 65 
St. Peter and St. Paul put to 
death 67 

Galba succeeded Nero 68 

Otho succeeded Galba, and Vi- 
tellius Otho 69 

Jerusalem taken and destroyed 70 
Titus succeeded Vespasian 79 

Pliny killed at Vesuvius 79 

Domitian succeeded Titus 81 

The Dacian war began 88 

Death of Josephus 93 

Nerva succeeded Domitian 96 

Trajan succeeded Nerva 98 

Death of Tacitus 99 

St. Ignatius destroyed at Rome 108 
The first Bishop of Rome 109 

Trajan subdued Assyria 115 

Jerusalem rebuilt, and the Tem¬ 
ple dedicated to Jupiter 130 

The Romans destroyed 580,000 
Jews, and banished the rest 
from Judea 135 

The Romans agreed to pay tri¬ 
bute to the Goths 222 

The Temple of Diana at Ephe¬ 
sus destroyed 260 

The Goths and Heruli defeated 
by Claudius II., and 300,000 
killed 269 

The 9th persecution of the Chris¬ 
tians 272 

Palmyra taken 273 

Dioclesian divided the empire 292 
Constantine tolerated the Chris¬ 
tians 323 


The Council of Nice 325 

Constantinople made the capital 
of the Empire 329 

The Mythological Temples de¬ 
molished 331 

Death of Constantine 337 

Death of Eusebius 342 

The Emperor Julian abjures 
Christianity 361 

Theodosius Emperor of the East 379 
His Death 395 

Europe overrun by Alaric 401 

Rome sacked by Alaric 410 

The Romans left Britain 426 

Genseric the Vandal overran 
Italy, and invaded Africa 439 

Pope Leo the Great 440 

Attila and the Huns overran Eu¬ 
rope 447 

The Saxons arrived in Britain 451 
Rome taken by Genseric 455 

Hengist murdered 300 British 
nobles 475 


Rome taken by Odoacer, and 
he made King of Italy, which 
put an end to the Roman Em - 
pire 1229 years after the build¬ 


ing of Rome 476 

Clovis King of the Franks 481 

Death of St. Patrick 491 

The Bishop of Rome asserted 
his supremacy 494 

Alaric defeated, and killed by 
Clovis 507 

Arthur King of Britain 515 

The Christian era invented and 
introduced by Dionysius, a 
monk 516 

Justinian made Emperor of the 
East 527 

Totila the Goth took and plun¬ 
dered Rome 547 

Retaken by Belisarius 549 

And recovered by Totila 550 

The Heptarchy begun in Eng¬ 
land 555 

Death of Justinian and Belisa- * 
rius 569 

The Latin tongue ceased to be 
spoken 580 

The flight of Mahomet from 
Mecca to Medina 622 

Death of Mahomet 633 

Jerusalem taken by Omar 636 

The Saracens conquered North¬ 
ern Africa 698 

Spain conquered by the Sara¬ 
cens 713 

The Christian religion propa¬ 
gated in Germany 719 

Charles Martel defeated the Sa¬ 
racens 732 






GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


23 


The Christian era first used in 

books 748 

Bagdad built by; Almanzor 762 
Charlemagne king of France 772 
- subdued the Sax¬ 
ons 781 

The Huns extirpated by Charle¬ 
magne 794 

Charlemagne crowned at Rome 800 
The Normans arrived in France 808 
Death of Charlemagne 814 

The Heptarchv united by Egbert 827 
Rome besieged by the Saracens 846 
Christianity preached in Den¬ 
mark and Sweden 850 

The Danes ravaged England 867 

Alfred defeated the Danes 878 

Death of Alfred 901 

Rollo flourished in Normandy 912 
Sueno King of Denmark 980 

Sueno conquered England 1013 

Canute King of England 1017 

Macbeth murdered Duncan 1040 

The. Turks took Bagdad, and 
overturned the empire of the 
Caliphs 1055 

The battle of Hastings, and 
Norman conquest 1066 

Feudal law introduced 1070 

Doomsday book finished 1086 

First Crusade 1095 

Jerusalem taken by the Crusa¬ 
ders 1099 

William Rufus killed in the New 
Forest 1100 

Death of Abelard 1143 

The second Crusade 1147 

The Bank of Venice established 1157 
Becket killed at Canterbury 1171 

Ireland conquered 1172 

Jerusalem taken by Saladin 1187 

Saladin defeated by Richard I. 1192 
The fourth Crusade 1202 

The Inquisition established 1204 

King John excommunicated 1208 

Magna Charta signed 1215 

Russia conquered by the Tar¬ 
tars 1238 

The fifth Crusade 1248 

Wales conquered 1254 

Bagdad taken by the Tartars, 
and the Saracen Empire ter¬ 
minated 1258 

The first English House of Com¬ 
mons 1258 

MassacreoftheFrench in Sicily 1282 
Wales united to England 1283 

Death of Friar Bacon 1284 

The Jews banished from Eng¬ 
land 1290 

Death of Cimabue, the reviver 
of painting 1300 


The King of France excommu¬ 

nicated 1301 

The Popes removed to Avignon 1308 
Battle of Bannockburn 1314 

Battle of Cressy 1346 

Battle of Poictiers 1356 

The Popes returned to Rome 1377 
A second Pope chosen at Avig¬ 
non 1378 

Death of Wicliffe 1385 

France under a Papal interdict 1407 
The Council of Constance de¬ 
posed two Popes 1414 

John Huss burnt 1415 

Jerome of Prague, do. 1416 

Joan of Arc defeated the. Eng¬ 
lish at Orleans 1428 

Constantinople taken by the 
Turks 1453 

Battle of Towton 1462 

Battle of Barnet 1471 

Battle of Tewkesbury 1471 

Castile and Arragon united 1479 
Battle of Bosworth 1485 

The Moors expelled Spain 1491 
Savanarola burnt at Rome 1498 
Battle of Flodden 1513 

Luther began to preach 1517 

Mexico invaded and plundered 1521 
Battle of Pavia 1525 

Rome taken by the Germans 1527 
Servetus burnt by the reformer 
Calvin 1531 

The Pope’s authority in Eng¬ 
land abolished 1533 

645 monasteries and religious 
houses suppressed in England 1539 
The Council of Trent from 1545 
to 1563 

Cardinal Beaton put to death 1546 
Interest fixed at ten per cent, in 
England 1547 

Eldest sons of Peers permitted to 
sit in the House of Commons 1550 
Five Bishops burnt by Philip 
and Mary 1555 

Charles theVth resigns his Go¬ 
vernment 1557 

Death of Calvin 1564 

Rizzio murdered 1566 

Murray murdered 1569 

Massacre of St. Bartholomew 1572 
Death of Knox ~ 1572 

Republick of Holland commen¬ 
ced 1579 

Mary Queen of Scots put to 
death 1587 

The Spanish Armada defeated 1588 
The first newspaper in England 1588 
Bank of England incorporated 1594 
Edict of Nantes tolerating Pro¬ 
testants in France 1598 





GENERAL CHRONOLOGY. 


24 

East-India Company establish¬ 
ed 1600 

Union of England and Scotland 1603 
Gunpowder Plot 1605 

Spain acknowledged the inde¬ 
pence of Holland 1609 

Henry IV. of France assassin¬ 
ated 1610 

Shakspeare died 1616. 

Yanini burnt at Toulouse 1619 

Death of Cervantes 1620 

Huguenot, or religious war in 
France begun 1621 

Death of Lord Bacon 1626 

Buckingham assassinated 1628 

Nine members of the House of 
Commons imprisoned 1629 

Bagdad taken by the Turks 1631 

Battle of Lutzen 1632 

Hampden’s trial in the exche¬ 
quer 1637 

Lord Strafford beheaded 1641 

Massacre in Ireland 1641 

Battle of Edgehill 1642 

Death of Galileo 1643 

Archbishop Laud beheaded 1644 

Death of Hampden 1644 

The Tartars overrun China 1644 

Battle of Marston Moor 1644 

Battle of Naseby 1645 

Charles I. delivered up by the 
Scots 1647 

Peace of Westphalia 1648 

Charles I. beheaded 1649 

Battle of Dunbar 1650 

Death of Des Cartes 1651 

Battle of Worcester 1651 

War of England and Holland 1652 

The English fleet defeated 1653 

Cromwell dissolved the Long 
"Parliament^ and made Pro¬ 
tector 1653 

Death of Gassendi 1656 

Death of Harvey 1657 

Death of Cromwell 1658 

Charles II. restored 1660 

Prussia independent 1663 

Great plague in England 1665 

Great fire of London 1666 

Candia taken by the Turks 1669 

Murder of the De Witts 1672 

Death of Milton 1674 

The Habeas Corpus Act passed 1678 
Lord Russel and Algernon Syd¬ 
ney put to death 1683 

Death of Colbert 1684 

The edict of Nantes revoked 1685 

Battle of Sedgmoor 1686 

Seven Bishops sent to the 
Tower 1686 

Revolution in England 1688 

Battle of the Boyne 1690 


The French Fleet defeated the 


English and Dutch 1691 

Surrender of Limerick 1691 

Battle of La Hogue 1692 

Hanover made an Electorate 1692 
The English funding system 
commenced 1694 

Treaty of Ryswick 1697 

Battle of Narva 1700 

Death of James II. 1701 

Gibraltar taken 1703 

Battle of Blenheim 1704 

Barcelona taken 1705 

Battle of Ramilies 1706 

Battle of Almanza 1707 

Battle of Oudenarde 1708 

Battle of Pultowa 1709 

Battle of Malplaquet 1710 

Treaty of Utrecht 1713 

The interest of money in Eng¬ 
land fixed at five per cent. 1714 
Louis XIV. died 1715 

Death of Leibnitz 1716 

Charles XII. killed 1718 

The Mississippi bubble 1719 

The South Sea bubble 1720 

Death of Peter the Great 1725 

Death of New r ton 1727 

Koulin Khan made king of Per¬ 
sia 1735 

-conquered the Mogul Em¬ 
pire 1739 

Porto Bello taken 1740 

Battle of Dettingen 1743 

Anson’s voyage completed 1744 

Battle of Fontenoy 1745 

Battle of Culloden 1746 

Kouli Khan murdered 1747 

Lord Lovat, &c. beheaded 1747 

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 1748 

Braddock defeated 1755 

Battle of Colin 1757 

Battle of Hockkerken 1758 

Louisburgh taken 1759 

Battle of Minden 1759 

Quebec taken 1759 

Havana taken 1762 

Treaty of Fontainebleau 1763 

Wilkes’ first election for Mid¬ 
dlesex 1768 

Do. second and third 1769 

The Shakspeare jubilee 1769 

Peace with Hyder Ally 1770 

Partition of Poland 1772 

Commencement of the Anieri- 
can War ' 1775 

Declaration of American Inde¬ 
pendence 1776 

Meeting of Deputies at London 
for Parlimentary Reform 1780 

Recognition of American Inde¬ 
dependence 1782 




GENERAL CHRONOLOGY- 


25 


Call of the States-general in 
France 1788 

Taking of the Bastile 1789 

French Republick proclaimed 1792 
Louis XVI. guillotined 1793 

French declaration of war 
against England and Holland 1793 
Robespierre guillotined 1794 

The Bank of England suspended 
its payments in cash 1797 

Bonaparte made Consul 1799 

Battle of Marengo 1800 

Peace of Amiens 1802 

War renewed between England 
and France 1803 

Bonaparte crowned Emperour 1804 
Battle of Austerlitz 1805 

Battle of Trafalgar 1805 

Battle of Jena 1806 

Battle of Friedland 1807 

Peace of Tilsit 1807 

Napoleon seized Ferdinand at 
Bayonne 1808 

Battle of Wagram 1809 

Marriage of Napoleon with the 
Arch-Duchess Maria Louisa 1810 
Moscow burnt, and the French 
armies destroyed by frost 1812 

Battle of Vittoria 1813 

Battle of Leipsic 1813 

Paris surrendered to the Allies 1814 
Treaty of Fontainebleau 1814 

Treaty of Vienna 1814 

Napoleon returned from Elba 1815 
Battle of Waterloo (June 18) 1815 

Napoleon surrenders to the Bel- 
lerophon 1815 

Treaty of Ghent, between Eng¬ 
land and America 1819 

Tragical assault of petitioners 
at Manchester 1819 

The Republick of Columbia pro¬ 
claimed 1819 

Do. Peru, Chili, and Mexico 1820 

Death of Napoleon 1820 

Death of George III. 1820 

Trial of Queen Caroline 1821 

War of Russia and Turkey 1829 

Catholick disabilities in England 
removed 1829 

DISCOVERIES. 

1345 The Canaries. 

1418 Madeira. 

1432 The Azores. 

1486 Cape of Good Hope. 

1492 America. 

1673 Louisiana, by the French. 

1686 Easter Island, by Roggewein. 
1690 Kamtschatka, by the Russians. 
1770 New South Wales, discovered 
by Cook. 

C 


1771 Sandwich Islands, by do. 

1774 New Caledonia, by do. 

1819 New South Shetland, by Wil¬ 
liams. 

The Icelanders discovered the 
Continent of America about 1000, 
and called it Winenland, from the 
vines in which it abounded. 

The South Sea was first seen by 
Europeans in 1513 from Mexico. 
Japan was discovered in 1542. 
Cape Horn was discovered by Le 
Maire and Schouton in 1616. 

The discoveries on the North-west 
Coast have extended from East to 
West to 149£ West, and from West to 
East to 156L leaving 7 degrees in lat. 
74 unexplored, or 140 miles. In Par¬ 
ry’s Voyage to Melville’s Island, the 
thermometer was 55° below Zero in 
lat 74*. 

Dates connected wi th the progress 
of knowledge and improvements 
since the Christian era. 

274 Silk brought from India. 

373 the Bible in Gothic. 

400 Bells mounted. 

493 Silk-worms in Europe. 

660 Organs used. 

663 Glass in England. 

800 The Aristotelian Philosophy 
introduced. 

830 Oxford University. 

991 The Arithmetical Digets. 

1080 Doomsday Book. 

1124 Musical notes. 

1200 Mariner’s Compass. 

1220 Astronomy cultivated in Eng¬ 
land. 

1239 Coals dug as fuel. 

1299 Spectacles invented. 

1302 Cambridge University. 

1319 Dublin University. 

1341 Petrarch crowned at Rome. 

1360 WicklifFe flourished. 

1436 Printing invented. . £-?'> ■ \> 
1454 University of Glasgowfounded. 
1464 Posts and Diligences esta¬ 
blished. 

1470 The first Almanack. 

1471 Printing in England. 

1517 Luther began to publish. 

1543 Copernican System published. 
1549 Telescopes invented. 

1602 Decimal Arithmetick. 

1604 Satellites of Jupiter. 

1614 Logarithms invented. 

1619 Circulation of the Blood. 

1623 Barometer invented. 

1662 Royal Society established. 








26 MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


1682 Philadelphia founded. 

1680 Air-pump discovered. 

1710 Newcomen’s Steam-Engine. 
1716 Death of Leibnitz. 

1720 Inoculation introduced. 

1722 Electricity improved. 

1726 Petersburgh Academy esta¬ 
blished. 

1730 Farenheit’s Thermometer. 

1736 Gottingen University esta¬ 
blished. 

1753 British Museum established. 
1768 Steam Engines improved. 

1771 Cook’s First Voyage. 

1773 Cotton Spinning Machinery. 
1778 Linnaeus died. 

1784 Euler died. 

1788 Galvanism discovered. 

1797 Priestley died. 

1798 Vaccination announced. 

1781 The Planet Herschel disco¬ 
vered. 

The Hindus have no civil chrono¬ 
logy, but their epochs are astronomi¬ 
cal and theological. They record 
fifty-five sovereigns of the sun be¬ 
fore the Christian era, which Sir 
W. Jones extends through a period 
of 1600 or 2000 years. But the 
priests make nine incarnations of 
Vishnu at very distant periods of 
time; and the astronomers have ob¬ 
servations several thousand years 
old, displaying a perfection of sci¬ 
ence, of instruments, and various 
knowledge, which indicates ages of 
preparation. Their astronomical cy¬ 
cles are, of course, mere abstract 
calculations, and their reference to 
a standard position in Aries fanci¬ 
ful ; while the discovery of Herschel, 
four small planets, and seventeen 
moons, render their vast calpa futile. 

The beginning of Moses is a sub¬ 
lime indefinite, and all the stages of 
the earth, from the granitick forma¬ 
tion, the transition rocks, and all the 
secondary strata, may have occu¬ 
pied millions of years in progressing 
to their present state from the be¬ 
ginning of Moses. Observations of 
500 or 1000 years would enable the 
Hindus to arrive at the mean periods 
on which their celestial chronology 
is founded. 

The 50 past calpas, 6 manwanteras, 
27 yugs, and the satya of the 28th, 
with the sandya at the beginning of 
the calpa, make a total of past time 
of 1970784000 years, in which Brah¬ 
min was 17064000 years in creating, 


after which the planetary motions 
commenced. A point gravely as¬ 
serted. 

The maya-yug of 4320000 years is 
divided into the satya yug of .4, the 
treta of .3, the dwaper of .2, and the 
cali-yug of .1 

At the close of each manwantera, 
of 71 maha-yugs, there is, say they, 
a period equal to a satya-yug of uni¬ 
versal deluge, of 1728000 saura- 
years. This, in principle, accords 
with my own theory, but the time 
is fanciful; though one sect of Brah¬ 
mins assert a period of deluge equal 
to mine, and at the same intervals. 

There are 57753.336 lunations in a 
maha-yug,and 1577917828 days from 
sunrise to sunrise; which gives 29 d. 
12 h. 44' 2" 47"' 36"" for a mean luna¬ 
tion, and 365 d. 15 h. 31' 31" 24'" for 
the length of a year, and all other 
periods are equally minute. The 
moon’s apogee and nodes have in¬ 
creased four revolutions in a yug 
since these tables were formed. The 
obliquity was then taken at 24°. 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHYS¬ 
ICKS. 

Signs express the relations of 
quantities: they are of different 
kinds, as, The sign of addition, 
called plus, as a-\-b, reads a plus b. 
The sign of substruction , —, called 
minus, as a — b, reads a minus b , or 
b substracted from a. The sign of 
multiplication, Xj as a X b, signifies 
that a is multiplied by b. Multiplica¬ 
tion is also expres sed by a full-po int 
(.), and by into, as a -f- 6 . c -f -d, or 

a b into c-\- d. The sign of divi¬ 
sion, -r, asa-i- 6 signifies that a is 
divided by b; or in the form of a 
a 

fraction, as :::: are the signs of 

proportion, as a: b\\ c : d, signifies 
that a is to 6 as c is to d. The radi¬ 
cal sign V, denotes the root of the 
quantity as V a is the square root 
of a, or the cube, biquadrate, &c. as 

3 V a, A V a, &c.: or by fractions, as 

a h, a L a T» a n > for the square, cube, 

biquadrate, and nth or indeterminate 
root of a. 

a —*, a — * 2 a — 3 , &c. denote in¬ 
verse powers of a , and are equal to 









_MATHEMATICKS 

The sign of equality , = as a -j- b 

— x, or a added to b is equal to x. - 

The sign of difference, GO, as a 00 x, 
signifies either a — x or x — a. 

7 is put between two quantities to 
express that the former is greater 
than the latter, as a 7 b, as a more 
than b; /_ signifies the reverse, as 
a / b, as a less than b. 

A Vinculum is a line drawn over 
several quantities signifying that they 
are to be taken collectively, as 

a — 6-j-cX^ — e signifies that the 
quantity represented by a — 6 -{- c is 
to be multiplied by d — e; so of the 
powers and the roots of quantities; 

thus, a -j- 6| 2 denotes the square of 
a -j- 6 as one quantity, and a -f- b\ 
the cube; or v signifies ergo, or 
therefore. 

In calculations lines or single di¬ 
mensions can only be compared with 
lines; superfices or double dimen¬ 
sions with superfices; and cubes or 
treble dimensions with cubes. Quan¬ 
tity of matter in cubes is detected only 
by relative momenta as in the varied 
momenta of weight, the varied reac¬ 
tion of resistance, in the same me¬ 
dium, &c. There is no ratio between 
finites and infinites, all finites having 
the same indeterminate ratio to the 
mere creation of the mind called in¬ 
finity; therefore all knowledge is 
strictly limited to the ratios of finites. 
All momentum is quantity of matter 
multiplied into velocity; and mo¬ 
mentum or power is evidence of 
matter and velocity acting in the di¬ 
rection of the resulting momentum. 

Fluxions were an invention of 
Newton, and. at the same time and 
independently Leibnitz invented the 
differential calculus. It is thus in 
almost all new inventions knowledge 
advances to a certain point and then 
several make the next step at the 
same time. Newton’s invention is 
however laid aside, and the differen¬ 
tial calculus preferred by all modern 
mathematicians. 

Duple ratio is that of 2 to 1. Sub- 
duple that of 1 to 2. And duplicate 
ratio is that of the square of one 
number to the square of another. 
Sub-duplicate is the ratio of the 
square roots. 

If the square of the diameter of a 


AND PHYSICKS. _27 

circle be multiplied by .7854 the pro¬ 
duct is the area. If the diameter of 
a sphere be cubed and multiplied by 
.5236 the product is the solidity ; and 
the square of the diameter multiplied 
by 3.14159 is the surface of a sphere. 

The branch of mathematics called 
Conick sections arises from the va¬ 
ried curves which a cone produces 
when cut in different directions; cut 
obliquely it is an ellipse; cut parallel 
to one side it is a parabola; and 
and when not parallel, but from the 
side through the base, is called an 
hyperbola. The ancient mathema¬ 
ticians exhausted the investigation of 
these figures, and the moderns have 
been equally industrious. The longer 
axis of an ellipse is called the trans¬ 
verse axis; the distance of either fo¬ 
cus from the centre of the transverse 
axis is called the eccentricity; the 
axis drawn through the centre at 
right angles to the other, is called 
the conjugate axis; any straight line 
passing through the centre is a di¬ 
ameter , and any chord to a diameter 
divided equally by it, is called an or¬ 
dinate ; the unequal parts of the di¬ 
ameter are called abcisscc. A third 
proportional to a diameter and its 
conjugate is the parameter and latus 
rectum. Conjugate diameters are pa¬ 
rallel to each other’s tangents. A line 
which joins either focus to the circum¬ 
ference is called the radius vector. 

In the parabola, the abscissa is a 
third proportional to the parameter 
and semi-ordinate. In the ellipsis, 
the square of the semi-ordinate is 
equal to the rectangle of the parame¬ 
ter and abscissa, less a rectangle of 
the same abscissa, and a fourth pro¬ 
portional to the axis, parameter, 
and abscissa. In the hyperbola the 
squares of the semi-ordinates are to 
each other, as the rectangles of the 
abscissa and a line formed of the 
abscissa and transverse axis. 

The radius of a circle is equal to 
an arc of 57.2957795 degrees. 

The word digit, applied to the 10 
figures, comes from digitus, a finger; 
computation being, in ancient times, 
performed by the 10 fingers. 

To find the surface of a spherical 
zone multiply the product of the di¬ 
ameter, into the height by 3.14159. 
To find the solidity add the squares 
of half the two diameters to id of 
the square of the height; multiply 








28 MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


this sum by the height and product 

by 1.5708. 

The surface of the segment of a 
sphere may be found by multiplying 
the diameter by the height, and this 
by 3.14159; and the solidity by mul¬ 
tiplying the height by .5236; and the 
product by three times the diameter 
less twice the height; or to three 
times the square of half the diameter 
of the base add the square of the 
height, multiply the product by the 
height and this product by .5236. 

. To find the contents of a cask, add 
double the square of the bung diame¬ 
ter to the square of the head diame¬ 
ter, and multiply this sum by the 
length of the cask, then divide the 
product by 1077 for ale gallons of 
282 cubick inches each, or by 882 for 
wine gallons of 231 cubick inches 
each. 

Laguy carried the ratio of the di¬ 
ameter to the circle to 128 figures, 20 
of which are as follows, 31,41592653 
5897932384, &c. 

Prime numbers are those which 
have no divisor; perfect numbers are 
those which are equal to the sum of 
all their divisors. 

The prime or indivisible numbers 
under 100 are, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 
19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 
61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89 and 97. 

Pyramids are one-third of prisms 
of equal base and height. They are 
to each other as their bases and 
heights. One third of the area of 
the base by the height is the solidity. 
The surface is half the product of the 
length of the base bygone of the 
sides. 

The area of a trigon when each 
side is 1, is 0.433. 

of a Pentagon.1.72 

of a Hexagon.2.598 

of a Heptagon • • • 3.6339 
of an Octagon • • • 4.8284 
of a Decagon • • • • 7.6942 
of a Dodecagon ■ • 11.196 

Square the side and multiply by 
these numbers. 

To find the fall of a body in a 
second, multiply the square of 3.1416 
by the length of the seconds pendu¬ 
lum, and divide by 2 . 

The dip of the horizon for various 
heights of the eye is as under, to be 
deducted. 

6 feet • •«• 2' 20" 


10 feet--.-3' 1" 

20 feet-.. 4' 16" 

30 feet.*.- 5' 14" 

40 feet-.-. 6 ' 2" 

50 feet-.. 7' 23" 

100 feet-.- -9' 33" 

The refraction of the air for dif¬ 
ferent altitudes is as under, to be de¬ 


ducted. 
Horizontal 33' 
1 ° 24' 29" 
2 -.18 35 
3-14 36 

4 -.11 51 

5 .. 9 54 
10 .. 5 15 
15 •• 3 30 


20° 2' 35" 
30 --I 38 
40 --I 8 

50 -.0 48 
60 -.0 33 
* 75 --0 15 
85 --0 5 


The arithmetical mean is half the 
sum, and the geometrical mean is 
the square root of the product. 

Quincunx is 1 at each of 4 corners, 
and 1 in the middle. 


The time of falling through the 
chord of a circle is equal to the time 
of descent through the diameter; and 
through all arcs of a cycloid are 
equal. 

The proportion of the area of a 
circle to its circumscribed square, is 
as 11 to 14. 

81 7 is the side of square equal to a 
circle whose diameter is 10 . 

Binary logarithms were invented 
by Euler to facilitate musical inves¬ 
tigations, and 2 is their integer in¬ 
stead of 10 in common, and 1 in hy- 
perbolick logarithms. 

In inverse proportion more re¬ 
quires less and less more. It is ex- 

1 

pressed fractionally as-—; a being 
in inverse proportion a, 

On an inclined plane, the power 
gained is as the length of the plane 
to the length of the base. The velo¬ 
city in descending to that falling per¬ 
pendicularly is as the height to the 
length, and the force is the same. 
For a body acquires the same velo¬ 
city as in falling perpendicularly 
through the height of the plane; ancl 
a body acquires the same velocity, 
in falling down any number of planes, 
or down a curve as perpendicularly 
from the extreme height. 

The convexity of the earth inter¬ 
poses to prevent the sight of distant 
bodies: thus at 600 yards 1 inch 
would be concealed, or an object an 










MATHEMAT1CKS AND PHYSICKS. 


inch high could not be seen in a 
straight line; at 900 yards, 2 inches; 
at 1400 yards, 5 inches; at 1 mile, 8 
inches; 3 miles, 6 feet; so that at 
that distance a man would be invi¬ 
sible; 4 miles, 10 feet; 5 miles, 16 
feet; 6 miles, 24 feet; 10 miles, 66 
feet; 12=95, 13=112, and 14 miles, 
130 feet. 

In all horizontal distances, yVth. 
should be added to the distance for 
horizontal refraction, and Legendre 
says, Vr th. Making this allowance, 
and remembering that a mile curvates 
8 inches, we may determine a dis¬ 
tance by knowing the elevation, or an 
elevation by knowing the distance. 
By multiplying 8 inches by the square 
of the distance; thus, if it is 10 miles, 
10 times 10 is 100, and 100 times 8 
inches is 66 feet as stated; and if the 
top of a mountain is seen at 50 miles 
distant, it would be 2500 times 8 
inches, equal to 1666 feet of eleva¬ 
tion, to which adding -fhf th for refrac¬ 
tion it would make the hill about 
1800 feet high, therefore 50 miles 
would be the extent of the prospect 
from the top. 

The v first writer who used algebraick 
signs, was Stifelius, of Nuremberg, 
in 1544. 

The science of probabilities has 
been extended in modern times by 
Laplace and other mathematicians, 
so as to be applicable to questions of 
all kinds, but it has for many years 
been applied to calculations of life 
annuities, and to chances of dice and 
cards. 

It is a general rule that every pro¬ 
bability may be expressed by a frac¬ 
tion, the numerator of which should 
be the number of chances for hap¬ 
pening, and the denominator the 
sum of the number of chances by 
which it may happen and may fail. 
But the probability of its not hap¬ 
pening is to be expressed by a nu¬ 
merator of the chances of failing, 
and a denominator consisting of the 
chances of failing and happening. 
The two fractions are of course al¬ 
ways equal to one. The value of a 
chance is found by multiplying the 
fraction, expressing the probability 
by the stake. The probability of 
throwing a particular number with 
one die is therefore 1 for the numera¬ 
tor, I and 5 for the denominator or 
£th. Then the probability of throw¬ 


ing the same twice is ith of ith, or 
iVth, or 3 times ith of 36, or irhrth. 

If A and B game, and A wins in p 
cases, and B in q cases, and the stake 
pa 

be a. A’s chance is-and B’s 

P+9 


qa 

ch ance-universall y. 

P+9 

The probabilities of throwing re¬ 
quired totals with two dice depends 
on the number of ways in which the 
totals can be made up by the dice. 
2, 3, 11, or 12 can only be made up 
one way each, and therefore the 
chance is but -‘g th. 4, 5, 9, 10 may 
be made up two ways, or -fVth. 6, 7, 
8, three ways, or iVth the chance of 
doublets is -aVth, the chance of par¬ 
ticular doublets is iri'6 th. 


The number of changes which any 
number of things, as bells, letters, 
cards, &c. can produce, is the pro¬ 
duct of all the figures multiplied to¬ 
gether, thus: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, bells, 
produce 720 changes. 


The chances against holding 7 
trumps is 160 to 1; against 6, it is 26 
to 1; against 5, 6 to 1; and against 
4 nearly 2 to 1. It is 8 to 1, against 
holding any two particular cards. 


The 26 letters of the alphabet make 
403 quintillians of combinations; 20, 
make 2£ quadrillions; and 12 would 
make 479 millions. 


The chance is equal in dealing 
cards that every hand will have 
seven trumps in two deals, or seven 
trumps between two parties, and 
also 4 court cards in every deal. 
This is so certain on an average of 
hands, that nothing can be more su¬ 
perstitious and absurd, than the pre¬ 
vailing notions about luck or ill-luck. 
The chance of having a particular 
card out of 13, is ihfds, or 1 to 4, and 
the chance of holding any two cards 
is Jth of ith, or iVth. The chances 
of a game are generally inversely as 
the number got by each, or as the 
number to be got to complete the 
games. 

There are 36 chances upon two 
dice. It is an even chance that you 
throw 8. It is 35 to 1 against throw¬ 
ing any particular doublets, and 6 to 
1 against throwing any doublets. It 








30_ MATHEMAT1CKS 

is 17 to 1 against throwing any 2 de¬ 
sired numbers. It is 4 to 9 against 
throwing a single number with either 
of the dice, so as to hit a blot or en¬ 
ter. Against hitting with the amount 
of 2 dice the chances against 7, 8 and 
9, are 5 to 1; against 10, is 11 to 1; 
against 11,17 to 1; and against sixes 
is 35 to 1. 

The oldest work on algebra is that 
of Diophantus, who flourished at Al¬ 
exandria in the 4th century. Its im¬ 
provers were Vieta, Descartes, New¬ 
ton, Euler, and La Grange. 

The mechanical powers may be 
reduced to three, but they are usually 
expressed as six, the lever, the wheel 
and axle, the pulley, the inclined 
plane, the screw, and the wedge. 

In a single moveable pulley the 
power gained is doubled. In a con¬ 
tinued combination the power is 
twice the number of pullies, less 1. 

In levers, the power is reciprocally 
as the lengths on each side the ful¬ 
crum or centre of motion. 

The power gained in the wheel 
and axle is as the radius of the wheel 
to that of the axle. 

The power gained by an inclined 
plane is as the length to the height. 

The power of a wedge is generally 
as the length to the thickness at the 
back. 

The power of the screw is as the 
circumference to the distance of the 
thread, or as 6.2832 to that distance. 

Resistance is an affair of experi¬ 
ment, sometimes a third, and at other 
times less. 

The momentum or force of a body 
is its maXter multiplied by its velo¬ 
city, and this is the basis of all me¬ 
chanics and all philosophy. Velo¬ 
city is as the space passed through 
in the same time, therefore matter 
and space are the source of all ma¬ 
terial power; and wherever power is 
present there is some matter in some 
motion. 

The contrivances for conveying 
the power of a machine to the work 
are 

Wheels and pinions on axles. 

Conical wheels. 

Rack work. 

Belts, bands, and chains. 

Cranks, single and double. 


AND PHYSICKS. _ 

The universal joint. 

The sun and planet wheel. 

The ball and socket. 

The lever of Lagoaroust, for pro¬ 
ducing a rectilineal from an alter¬ 
nating circular motion. 

Reversing a motion is produced by 
merely crossing a belt, or making 
one wheel work into another. 

Fly-wheels keep up a constant 
equal force, from which partial forces 
are derived, or unequal actions kept 
uniform. 

The friction on under shot water 
wheels, is fths the actual force of 
the water, which, in falling 15 inches, 
acquires a velocity of 9 feet nearly m 
a minute, and then if 265lbs. of head 
water fall 15 inches, the whole is 
3975 for the force, but by experiment 
it raises but 9375 lbs. 135 inches, or 
1266, or jth nearly. Then 1266 X by 
the velocity of the wheel is the whole 
force, according to Smeaton, inde¬ 
pendent of reactions of floats, &c. 
which gives 10 to 3, or 2-8 as the 
proportion of force and effect. In 
over shot wheels the power is 
greater. 

An under shot wheel has the great¬ 
est force when its circumference 
moves with fths of the velocity of 
the stream, and the best velocity of 
an over shot wheel is 3 feet in a 
second, and depends on proportioning 
the buckets, the power of the water 
being as the heignth it falls through. 
In the under shot wheel the power is 
to the effect as 3 to 1, and in the 
over shot wheel double, or 3 to 2. 

As every human being had two 
parents, these four, and tnese eight, 
in three generations, ancestors thus 
double in every generation of 331 
years, and eight-fold in every 100 
years; so going back another 100 
years, or to 1630, the ancestry of 
every living person would be 8 X 8, 
or 64: in 1530, it would be 8 X 64, 
or 512: in 1406, be 4096: in 1330, 
32768: in 1230, 221344: in 1130, 
2097152; and at the era of the con¬ 
quest, the ancestry of every one of 
the English family was the whole 
population of England; while on the 
other hand, every one having chil¬ 
dren at that time was the direct pro¬ 
genitor of the whole of the living 
race. The race of the year 2530 will 
in like manner descend from 8 or 9 





31 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHY SICKS. 


millions of the present race. In this 
way the average powers of humanity 
and of animals are kept up, and 
without mixture families deteriorate 
in faculties and become extinct. In 
one nation the people are all kindred 
in remote degrees, and had common 
ancestry. 

On examining Zerah Colburn, the 
calculating boy, who in a minute or 
two could give the exact product of 
five or six figures by five or six, or 
extract the square or cube root of 
eight or ten figures, the following 
rules about the square root were eli¬ 
cited :—1. A square number cannot 
have an odd number of cyphers. 2. 
If the last figure is a 4, the last but 
one will be even. 3. If the last is a 
5, the last but one is a two. 4. If 
the last is odd, the last but one is 
even. 5. If the last is even, except 
4, the last but one is odd. The two 
last cannot be even, except two cy¬ 
phers or two fours. More than the 
three last cannot be the same, unless 
cyphers or fours. George Bidder, 
another calculating boy, had in¬ 
vented similar sets of rules. 

The log-line is divided into spaces 
of fifty feet, and the way measured 
by a half minute sand glass, which 
bears nearly the same proportion to 
an hour that fifty feet bears to a 
mile. 

The friction of cylinders or wheels 
is as the pressure, and inversely as 
the diameter.— Coulomb. 

Friction, in general, in machinery, 
is taken at a loss of one-fourth of 
the power exerted. It arises from 
the lateral transfer of the motion, 
and from the force of weight acting 
at right angles to the imparted mo¬ 
tions, and in rubbing is as the surfa¬ 
ces, imparting and receiving motion. 

The least friction is when polished 
iron moves on brass.— Coulomb. 

The force of a man in turning a 
winch is taken at 116 lbs., or as much 
as would raise 256 lbs. 3281 feet in a 
day; his force in pumping is as 190, 
or equal to 419 lbs. in 3281 feet; in 
ringing 259, or 572 lbs. 3281 feet; and 
in rowing 273, or 608 lbs., 3281 feet. 

Smeaton, a good authority, reck¬ 
oned a horse equal to five men, and 
Bossuet seven men, and an ass to 
two men. A horse, says Desagulier, 


can draw 200 lbs. 2b miles per hour, 
for eight hours per day, or 240 lbs. 
six hours. Smeaton says that a 
horse loaded with 224 lbs. can travel 
twenty-five miles in seven or eight 
hours. 

The force of a horse per Desagu¬ 
lier, is 44000 lbs. 1 foot per minute. 

Per Smeaton, 22916 ditto. 

Per Watt, 33000 ditto. 

Then, as Mr. Watt, in a steam en¬ 
gine, considers one fourth lost by 
friction, he takes Desagulier’s 44000 
lbs. as the horse power in his steam 
engine. 

230 gallons on an over shot water 
wheel, a 6.12 inch steam engine cy¬ 
linder, 1 horse, 5 men’s power, wind¬ 
mill sails 17.89 feet, are all equal to 
raise 1000 lbs. avoirdupois thirteen 
feet in a minute. 

1584 gallons, a cylinder 14.2 inches, 
ten horses, fifty men, or 56.57 feet 
Dutch sails, are equal to raising 1000 
lbs. 130 feet in a minute.— Fenioick. 

One bushel of good coals raise from 
twenty-four to thirty-two millions of 
pounds one foot per minute. Four 
bushels of coals per hour, with a cy¬ 
linder of 31J inches, and 17£ strokes 
of seven feet per minute, is a force 
equal to forty horses constantly. A 
rotative double engine, with a cylin¬ 
der 23f inches, making 21£ strokes 
of five feet per minute, is a twenty 
horse power; and a cylinder 17£, 
making 25 strokes of four feet is a 
ten horse power: the consumption 
of coals being proportional.— Watt. 

The common velocity of overshot 
wheels is three feet per second. 

A man or horse will perform his 
labour with the greatest advantage, 
when the resistance is 4'th of his 
natural strength, and when his velo¬ 
city is equal to i of his greatest ve¬ 
locity when not impeded. The force 
of a man at rest is about 70 lbs. and 
his velocity six feet when not im¬ 
peded, therefore his force is exerted 
to the best advantage by a resistance 
equal to 31 lbs. and a velocity of 
2 feet per second; so with a horse, 
his greatest pull is 420 lbs., equal to 
20 cubick feet of steam per minute, 
and his rate 10 feet a second, there¬ 
fore his labour is best performed at 
187 lbs. and 3 feet 4 inches per 
second. 






32 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


A horse will draw 200 lbs. for eight 
hours, at 2£ miles an hour; and the 
strength of five men is equal to one 
horse. According to work or posi¬ 
tion a horse can perform the work 
of seven men, or onlv of three men, 
but five is taken as tne mean. 

The resistance in the same fluid to 
the same body is as the square of the 
velocity, because the number of 
atoms encountered is as the super- 
fices of the moving body. The par¬ 
ticular resistance of different fluids is 
to be determined by experiment. A 
ball which, without the resistance 
of air, ought to rise twelve miles, at 
2000 feet per second, will ascend but 
2920 feet. Resistance too, overcomes 
velocity, so as to render the velocity 
of falling bodies uniform, after moving 
through 8| feet of water and 260 feet 
of air. 

Horse power in steam engines is 
calculated as the power which would 
raise 33,000 lbs. a foot high in a mi¬ 
nute, or 90 lbs. at the rate of 4 miles 
an hour. Some experimentalists es¬ 
timate it at J less, but the above is 
adopted by most theoretical writers. 

The force necessary to move a 
wheel carriage on a level road, is 
about ■gVth of the load, on a railway 
it is but the 150th. On a canal it is 
but the 600th. 

Friction in drawing a body over 
a horizontal surface is equal to £d 
or $th, and another writer makes it 
7 to 20. Friction of wheels or cylin¬ 
ders is as the weights divided by the 
diameters. In pulleys the friction is 
reduced one half by grease. The gen¬ 
eral allowance in machinery it§d 
for friction. 

In wheel-machinery, to determine 
the number of revolutions of the last- 
moved part for one of the first-moved 
part., divide the product of the cogs 
in the driving wheels by the product 
of the cogs in the driven wheels. 

The strength of an inch square of 
different kinds of wood pulled length¬ 
ways, has been determined as under: 
Beech . . . 6000 lbs. 

Oak . . . 7000 

Alder . . . 5000 
Ash . . . 6000 

Fir. . . . 4000 
Birch . . 4200 

Walnut . . 5000 
Cedar . . 5000 


A piece of fir two inches in diame¬ 
ter bears 7 tons; a rod of iron, Jd of 
an inch diameter, 3 tons; and a 
hempen rope of the same size will 
carry 1000 lbs. The rule is as fol¬ 
lows : square the diameter in inches 
or parts, and multiply for fir by 9, 
for rope by 22, and for iron by 106, 
the product is cwts. A six thread 
rope bears 631 lbs., and a nine thread 
1014 lbs., a twelve thread 1564 lbs., 
an eighteen, 2148 lbs. 


The lateral strength of bodies is 
as the area of the section. A piece 
of freestone requires 205 lbs. to pull 
it asunder, and the lateral strength 
of fir is 18 times less than its strength 
lengthways. Emerson determines 
that a rod of good oak one inch 
square, will for a short time bear in 
the middle 330 lbs. and permanently 
207 lbs. The proportions for different 
substances of equal lengths and 
sizes are, oak and yew as 11, ash 
and elm as 8£, walnut and red fir 7, 
beech, birch, alder and white fir 6, 
iron 107, brass 50, bone 22, lead 6£, 
freestone 1; in regard to loads 
placed in their middle. 


In resisting compression the 
strength of timber in a rod 4 feet 
long and irVths of an inch square is 
for fir 226 lbs., beech 146 lbs., and 
oak 86 lbs. Oak will bear a pressure 
of 4000 lbs. per square inch, but 
other experiments make it 3000 lbs. 
Short specimens give to oak a com¬ 
parative power of resisting pressure 
of 12. Willow and fir 9, and ash, 
elm, and poplar 7. 


The cohesion of cast iron is about 
30000 lbs. per square inch. 


Coulomb establishes that the re¬ 
sistance of fluids is as the velocity 
and cohesion or viscidity of the par¬ 
ticles. And that as the resistance 
of oil to that of water is as 17.5 to 1, 
this is the law of their cohesion. 

Water presses on the bottoms of 
vessels as the base by the height, 
whatever be the form or bulk of the 
height. This is the hydrostatick pa¬ 
radox ; and, by the application of 
it, slender pipes are made to produce 
an extraordinary pressure at the 
base, for it is always as the base by 
the height. 

The smallest quantity of water 
balances any quantity however 
great, on the principle of finding its 





_ MATHEMATICKS 

level; hence, if a long pipe be in¬ 

serted in a butt of water, however 
small its bore, it will burst the butt 
as though it had been blown up 
with gunpowder. Bramah’s press 
is made on this principle, and a co¬ 
lumn of water £ an inch diameter, 
acting On a square foot of water, 
produces 576 tons pressure, or upon 
a yard in diameter, of 41472 tons, 
and made to act so as to bear upon 
any substance. The weight of wa¬ 
ter depends on its height and not 
on its quantity, and this is called 
the hydrostatick paradox. 

The quantity of water discharged 
through different apertures, with 
different heights of the fluid, is as 
the areas of the apertures and the 
square roots of the heights; but 
one-third more will be discharged 
through a pipe than through the 
aperture. 

The centres of pressure of a fluid 
and of percussion, are fds the 

height. 

In levelling it is usual to allow the 
10th of an inch in every 200 yards, 
or 8 inches in a mile; 6 feet in 3 
miles; 10 % feet in 4 miles; 15 h in 5; 
24 in 6; 66 in 10; 100 in 12£; and 
130 feet in 14 miles for the spheri¬ 
city of the earth. 

Projectiles independently of resis¬ 
tance, describe parabolick curves. 

In a Circle, calling D the diame¬ 
ter, C the circumference, A the area, 
and P 3.14159. 


c 

4 A 

A 

o 

I 

ii 

Q 

—, or 

2-p/— 

P 

C 

P 


4 A 


C= P D or —, 

or Z V 


D 


PD 2 

C 2 

D C 

A=- 

or —, or 

4 

4P 

4 

C 

4 A 

C 2 

II 

1 

o 

—, or 

— 

D 

D 2 

4 A 


The following are the varied rela¬ 
tions of forces : b the body, f the 
force, m the momentum, v the ve¬ 
locity, 5 the space, t the time. Then 
severally— 

m f m t ft 

ss=—, as —, as, —, as — 

V V s s 


AND PHYSICKS. 33 

bs 

f as m, as b v. t as — 
t 
bs 

m asf as b v, as — 
t 

m s f 

v as—, as-*, as— 
b t b 

t m tf 
sasi v, as—, as— 
b b 
s sb sb 

t as—, as —, as — 

v m f 

The centre of gravity , or of percus¬ 
sion, putting a for a line, joining the 
vertex, and the middle of the base is, 
in different bodies, as under; taken 
from the vertex: 

A plain triangle, § a. 

A right cone, f <e 

In a sector, as arch to chord, so is 
f radius to the distance from centre. 

In a sphere, segment of a sphere, 
spheroid, or conoid, the altitude be¬ 
ing .r, and the whole axis a. 

4 a _3 v 

The sphere, or spheriodis- 

6 a — 4x. 

Hemisphere, or spheroid, f x. 

Parabolick conoid . . §.r. 

Hyperbolick conoid . 

6 a-j- 3 x. 

The centre of gravity and percus¬ 
sion of any number of bodies, or 
masses, in a right line, is found by 
multiplying each body by its dis¬ 
tance from some fixed point in the 
line, and dividing the sum of the 
products by the sum of the bodies, 
then the quotient is the distance 
from the point. 

Or, if the bodies are not in one 
plane, a common plane must be as¬ 
sumed ; and then the sum of the pro¬ 
ducts of the bodies into their dis¬ 
tances, divided by the bodies, is the 
distance of the common centre from 
the plane. 

The centre of oscillation of a right- 
lined rod, is two-thirds of its length 
from the point of suspension. 

In small arcs, the vibrations of 
equal pendulums are performed in 
the same time. The times are as the 
square roots of the lengths. The 
lengths are as the squares of the 
number of vibrations in the same 








34 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


time. An elastick pendulum, vibra¬ 
ting between semi-cycloidal cheeks, 
performs all its arcs in equal time. 
Compensation, or gridiron pendu¬ 
lums, are formed of steel and brass 
alternately, so as not to vary in 
length by temperature. 

The distance of the centre of gyra¬ 
tion from the axis of rotation is as 
follows:— 

A right line in length X V 
Circle, or cylinder, about axis— 
Radius X V \- 

Circle about diameter- -Radius X 
Vi. 

Plane of a circle, about diameter 
£ Radius. 

Surface of a sphere about diameter 
- -Radius X V f. 

Solid globe, Radius X V -f. 

Cone, Radius X V T %. 

The equation of the parabola is 
yy—p x ; and, therefore, the squares 
of the ordinates are to each other as 
the abscess. 

The equation of the hyperbola is 
bh 

yy-—(tx- ftf 2 .) 

aa 

The equation of the ellipse is yy= 
cc 

— (tx — x 2 .) 
tt 

The equation of the circle is yy= 
dx — x 2 . 

These four are curves of the first 
order, comprised in the general equa¬ 
tion o= a-\-bx-\-cy-\-dx 2 -{-cxy-\-fy 2 . 

Curves of the second order have, 
for their general equation, o = as 
above; adding gx 3 -j- hx-y -j- kxy 2 
-f -ly 3 . And those of the third order, 
superadding mx 4 -\-nx 3 y-\-px 2 y 2 -\- 
qxy 3 -f -ry 4 .—x and y being rectangu¬ 
lar co-ordinates. 

A catenarian curve is that formed 
by a chain, or rope, suspended at 
both ends. A cycloid, is the curve 
formed by a point in a wheel, or 
body on the earth, which revolves 
and goes forward at the same time, 
and that in which all bodies fall. A 
parabola is the curve formed by 
water from a pump, or by a stone 
from a sling. 

The head of a fish is a conoid, or 
the solid form of least resistance. 

The cycloid is the curve line of 
swiftest descent, and is precisely the 
curve which the double motion of the 
earth generates in all falling bodies. 


The hexagonal cells of bees present 
the greatest space with the least la¬ 
bour. The male cells are invariably 
5-18ths of an inch, and female ones 
13-60ths, always and every where. 

A proportion, or ratio of two num¬ 
bers, is greater or smaller as the 
quotient of their division is more or 
less. Thus 6 is to 2 in greater pro¬ 
portion than 6 to 3, because £ gives 

CL 

more than 3 -. Hence f- or—, is the 
b 

same as 6 : 2 , or a : b. 

If a’b:: c-d. 

Thenaicd b : d. 

a c 

And ad—cb, or —=— 
b d 
c-\-d • d 
c—d i d 


And a-(-& : b 
And a — b : b 
If b equal c 
Or a • b :: b : 


d, 


Then 6 is a mean proportional to 
a and d. 

It is also a third proportional to a 
and ad. 

And it has to c, a duplicate ratio of 
a to d. 

Then also ad = b 2 ; and b is the 
square root of ad. 

When a is to b as b to c, and c to d, 
and d to e, then a is a triplicate ratio 
to d , the third term; and a quadru¬ 
plicate to e, the fourth term. 

The sum of an arithmetical series 
is found by adding the first and last 
terms, and multiplying by half the 
number of terms. 

Any term is the first term added 
to the additional number of common 
differences. If the first term is 3, 
and the common difference is 5, then 
the 12th term is 11 X54~3=58. 

When the first and last are given, 
any intermediate terms are found by 
substracting the two terms, and di¬ 
viding by one more than the num¬ 
ber of terms sought for the common 
difference. Thus if we want 6 terms 

35 

between 5 and 40—then 40—6=^— 

b-j-1 

=5; and 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35; 40 
is the series. 

Every geometrical series being the 
continued multiplication by a fixed 
difference, the terms are, r being the 
difference a, ar, ar 2 , ar 3 , &c. to ar n 
for n terms. The last term, there¬ 
fore, is ar n —4 because the first in¬ 
volves no power of r. 






MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 35 


The sum of an ascending series is 
found by multiplying the last term 
by the common ratio—substracting 
the first term and dividing the differ¬ 
ence by the ratio less 1. 

The sum of a descending series is 
found by deducting the power of the 
ratio raised to the number of terms 


from 1, and dividing the difference by 
1 less the ratio, and multiply this 
quotient by the first term. 

And the sum of a descending infi¬ 
nite series is found by dividing the 
first term by 1 less the common ratio. 

Logarithms, so useful in philoso¬ 
phy, are the arithmetical series in 
contrast with a parallel geometrical 
series, by which the multiplication 
of any two terms of one series cor¬ 
responds with additions of the other. 
The Logarithms-for prime Numbers, 
under 100, are as under, and others 
are formed from these by mere 
multiplications and additions: 


2— .301030 

3— .477121 
5— .698970 
7— .845098 

11—1.041393 

13—1.113943 

17—1.230449 

19—1.278754 

23—1.361729 

29—1.462398 

31—1.491362 

37—1.568202 

41—1.612784 


43—1.633469 

47—1.672098 

53—1.724276 

59—1.770852 

61—1.785330 

67—1.826075 

71—1.851258 

73—1.863323 

79—1.897627' 

83—1.919078 

87—1.939390 

97—1.986772 


The Index is always one less than 
the number of digits in the whole 
numbers. 

As examples of the use of the 
above, all the powers of each num¬ 
ber are found by multiplying by 2, 3, 
4, &c. Thus the Log. of 4 is twice 
that of 2; of 8 is thrice; of 16 is 4 
times; and so on. And the Log. 
of 9 is twice that of 3, of 27 is three 
times, &c. So the multiplies of-any 
two of the figures have the sum of 
their Logs, for their Log. Thus 2X 
7=14, and the Logs, of 2 and 7 added, 
are the Log. of 14. This short table 
will, therefore, produce any desired 
Logarithm of any number. 

Log. of the arc of a quadrant 
1.57079=.196118. 

Of the chord=.150515. 

Of the circle, 6.283=.798180. 

Of earth’s rotation per second at 
the equator, 1525.46=3.183401. 

Of earth’s velocity per second, 
97793 feet=4.990307. 


Of distance from sun, 93.026240 
miles=7.968605. 

Parallax, 8".7726=.943129. 

Of days in a year=2.562592. 

Of sec. in a day=4.935326. 

Of moon’s fall in her orbit per mi¬ 
nute, 128814 feet=5.109963 (not 16 
feet!) 

The following is a brief view of 
some modern principles of physicks, 
published by the editor : 

All phenomena are results of mat¬ 
ter in motion, and motions are trans¬ 
ferred ad infinitum; transfer being 
action, and reception re-action. 

Space is occupied by atoms and 
masses transferring power to one 
another, so as to be a plenum of 
power, in bodies or atoms in regular 
motion. 

Wherever there is power there is 
matter in motion, and wherever there 
is matter in motion there is power, 
directly as their multiple. 

Yis inertia is the effect of contrary 
or oblique motions, matter deriving 
all its power from motion. 

Powers of attraction, repulsion, 
universal gravitation, projectile 
force, caloric, chymistry, sympathy, 
fluids sui generis," &c. &c. are in¬ 
ventions to conceal Ignorance, be¬ 
ing universally resolvable lirto^some 
matter or matters in some motion 
or motions, the detection of which 
is knowledge. 

Qualities of body and matter are 
mere variations of power or form, 
and always measured by relative 
material results of matter on matter. 

Definite sizes and definite results 
of all kinds, are consequences of ac¬ 
tions and reactions, arriving at 
limits by a law of simultaneous se¬ 
ries, increasing and decreasing ; 
hence, whatever is is fit, and what 
is not fit is not; and all actual and 
continued existence is, for the time, 
in general harmony. 

The following new and original 
determinations, m addition to others 
under the heads Astronomy and 
Philosophy, were made by Sir R. 
Phillips in 1831. Results only are giv¬ 
en, and details are avoided in a work 
of this miscellaneous character:— 

Bodies deflected at right angles 
to a system in progressive motion, 
rise with a force directly as the height 
attained, and inversely as the pro¬ 
gression, and they return contrary- 
wise. If the deflection is in the 





36 MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


quadrant of a sphere, the deflecting 
and returning force is inversely as 
the quadrant, and directly as the 
progression. 

If the quadrant is part of a rota¬ 
ting sphere, the rotating periphery 
is the base of a sector, whose apex 
is the centre of the circle, and whose 
equal sides are the radii. But the 
CXD 

areas of circles are-, and the su- 

4 

perficies of a sphere are CXD; hence, 
in comparing the rotative force of 
any periphery with that of the whole 
sphere, or in using it as part of the 
whole, the periphery moved through 
must be multiplied by 4. But if the 
sphere is not true, as in the earth, 
then by its proportion to a true 
sphere, and for our oblate spheroid, 
the multiplier is 3.98406. 

But as the peripheries are the 
bases of areas described in differ¬ 
ent times, so, in comparing their 
forces for different times, their 
squares must be compared, or as the 
motions are multiples of the times, 
the squares of the times may be 
adopted. Then as 'central force or 
O 

falling is for a second-, for other 

4 R 

times it is as 4 R 2 or T 2 . This ratio 
of areas described by the peripheries, 
is therefore the true cause of the 
laws of acceleration traced by Gali¬ 
leo, and not the motion added to 
motion as has been plausibly al- 
O 

leged. Taking-, for the fall for 

O 2 4R 

any time, or-for the square of the 

4 Ra¬ 
fail, the fall for other times is as R 2 
is to the fall for that time, so is R 2 
for another time to the fall for that 
time. Thus, if 1525 feet in 1 second 
give 16.085 feet of fall, 3050 2 give 
1525 2 

64.34 feet of fall, or-, for half 

2 2 ^ 

a second give 4.02125 feet of fall. 
But the square of the times 1, 2, §, 
&c. is equivalent to R 2 , so we may 
substitute these for R 2 , though the 
square of the periphery in the time, 
or the motion of areas, is the cause 
of the phenomenon. 

The earth turns on its axis be¬ 
cause it is deflected from a right line 
in one tangent to another, whose 


angles, in 24 hours, vary 59'.136; 
the sine of which is 172 to the whole 
force, whose sine 10000 carries it, in 
24 hours, through a distance equal 
to 64.33 circumferences. Then as 
10000 : 64.33 :: 10172 to 65.44 one cir¬ 
cumference more, owing to the de¬ 
flective force 172. Ana this force 
acts on the outer hemisphere because 
a body moves only in the direction 
in which it is impelled, and an extra 
force on one hemisphere would pro¬ 
duce rotation. Thus all planets and 
the sun itself rotate, and rotation is 
evidence of falling from one tangent 
to another. In the moon, the tides 
of the earth are the compensating 
force. The inclination demands an 
increase as 1.077 to 1., and reduces 
65.44 to 65.35. In a quadrant = 
5876 circumferences, the 64.33d is 
91.31 extra rotations. 

The vibrations of a pendulum are 
diminutive representations of the 
earth’s motions, and the length of a 
pendulum for a second is directly as 
O 2 , and inversely as 4 2 X 6.283 2 . 
As R or 4 varies from the mean of a 
true sphere at the place, the pendu¬ 
lum is longer or shorter. For other 
times, it is governed by the ratio of 
R 2 and O 2 in a second to R 2 and O 2 
in the other time. The length of the 
pendulum, determined by observa¬ 
tion, enables us therefore to deter¬ 
mine the exact values of O, R, or 4, 
the figure of the earth, any two be¬ 
ing given ; for the areas described 
by the pendulum exactly mimick the 
areas deseribed by a radius of the 
earth by its rotation. 

As the oblate figure of the earth 
depends on the variation of 4; and 
O 2 

as in the equation-=P, 

4 R 2 X 6.283 2 
O 2 X P 

we have-=4, more or 

R 2 X 6.283 2 

less; so may we find the ratios of the 
two diameters by comparing it with 
a true circle. It is as 4 to 3.98406. 
The cause is the unequal force of the 
outer hemisphere, which lengthens 
the cosines, for the orbit in that case 
would not be the exact centre of the 
force of both hemispheres, and the 
poles w T ould be flattened about 16 
miles by that small difference in the 
equatorial force. 

The eccentricity of orbits, and the 
advance of the line of apsides, arise 






MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


37 


from the extra rotation of the earth, 
or any planet, while performing its 
orbit. Then the orbit motion, dur¬ 
ing a rotation of the earth, is 1,600,- 
290 miles; but to readjust the orbit 
without enlargement, the whole 
quantity is given to the radius, first 
positively, and then it is abstracted 
negatively, by whiclTthe 1,600,290 
miles in the orbit are neutralized, 
and the orbit affected only by an 
advance of the apsides equal to the 
substantive circumference of the 
earth in the ecliptick. The positive 
and negative results are effected by 
the alternate tangental action of the 
outer hemisphere, in passing from 
the perihelion to the aphelion, to the 
limit of the forces; and by the 
chordal action of the inner hemi¬ 
sphere in passing from the aphelion 
to the perihelion. But for this truly 
sublime economy, the extra rotation 
would enlarge the orbits in every re¬ 
volution by 1,600,290 miles. The 
true eccentricity on 93 millions dis¬ 
tance is 1,558,870 miles, or as 1 to 
0.01685; and. if the advance of the 
apsides, &c. is added in measure, it 
would be exactly equal to the extra 
day’s motion. Of course, every in¬ 
crement of an orbit is part of a se¬ 
ries of concentrick circles, of which 
the sun is the constant centre. The 
egg-form is a mere picture or hiero- 
glyphick history of the orbit. If 
planets were points, they would per¬ 
form exact circles; but definite bulks 
give two degrees of force to their in¬ 
ner and outer hemispheres, whose 
motions running into each other al¬ 
ternately prevail, and hence the va¬ 
riation in orbit and centre as de¬ 
scribed. 

Kepler’s law should be T 2 : t 2 ;; 
1)3 Hie ; d 3 M16. it has no t hitherto 
been understood ; but it arises from 
the Times being circles, which are 
involved with forces; and then the 
force, or power, being first extracted, 
the root is the circle in the usual re¬ 
lations of circles to the radii. The 
power of the force in a quadrant is 
1.5708, and the Time is the circle 
i57°^ ; that i 

is T = C »■«*» therefore T C. 

The true ratio therefore is T L57Ud : 

i 

t 1.5708 .. D ; d. But to give an ex- 

i 

pression like Kepler’s, since 0708 = 

D 


2 

3.1416, and the denominator of the co¬ 
efficient may be carried to the last 
terms without changing the propor¬ 
tion, T 2 is to t 2 as D ''- uiy to d 311ie . 
The roots and powers are, of course, 
attained by dividing or multiplying 
the logarithms. Mercury, by this 
corrected ratio, comes out 37,593,000 
miles; Venus, 68,254,630; and the 
other planets slightly more than 
usual. 

The two forces which move the 
planets are the deflective force from 
the line of the sun’s motion, pro¬ 
duced by the sun’s rotation on his 
axis and around the centre of mo¬ 
mentum of the system which carry 
or urge the medium of space into 
circles, and these act tangent-wise 
on the planets as 1.2114; and the re¬ 
turning force by which they follow 
the sun in the whole moving system 
as 1—between the two performing a 
resultant motion of 1.5708 in a quad¬ 
rant, and a return to the line in the 
next quadrant. 

Since neither the sun nor any mat¬ 
ter has power without motion, so in 
the sun’s great power we have evi¬ 
dence of great progressive motion. 
Then the rotation of 6619 feet per 
second, demands a velocity of 26,- 
476 feet, to render the centripetal 
merely equal to the centrifugal force. 
Again, rotation is itself evidence of 
falling from a tangent into an orbit. 
Herschel, by observation, thought the 
sun somehow moved towards Her¬ 
cules, with the velocity of the earth, 
or 100,000 feet per second. It is 
therefore now inferred," that the sun 
actually describes a great orbit round 
some undiscriminated centre; and 
Sir R. Phillips analogically has esti¬ 
mated the size of this orbit on three 
degrees of central force. With equal 
centripetal and centrifugal at 162,865 
millions; with 4.02 feet of fall per 
second at 654,722 millions; or, with 
16.085 of fall at 2,619,750 millions ; 
performed in each case in exactly 
25,868 years, the period of the pre¬ 
cession of the equinoxes, which he 
considers as the true period of the so¬ 
lar orbit. Hence the changes of 
50". 1 per annum in the phenomena 
of the earth and stars, or of a degree 
in 72 years ; and hence the whole of 
the stars go apparently round in 25,- 
868 years. Of course, the planets as 
to the sun are therefore like satellites. 







38 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


approximating quanti- 
3 iues’ progression, the 


The three a 

ties, the apsides' progression, 
earth’s circumference, and the pre¬ 
cession, have been connected at col. 
620 ; but the theory of a solar orbit 
rendering tire precession its measure, 
the apsides’ progression alone ap¬ 
pears to arise from the acceleration 
of the earth’s extra rotation. The 
period is 20,910 years, and the an¬ 
nual angle 61".916, equal to 27,925 
miles in the earth’s orbit. Then 
24,894 equatorial measure of the 
earth would be, in the ecliptick, 26,- 
812; and adding increase on in¬ 
crease a 47th for the moon, and ef¬ 
fects of variable distance, the 26,- 
812 would become 27,925. At the 
same time, this is a period of mo¬ 
dern observation, and may be sub¬ 
ject to variations, owing to the solar 
orbit, while the precession, or solar 
orbit of 50".1, was well known to 
the ancient Hindoos; and, as now 
appears, arises from the fixity of the 
axis from terrestrial structure, while 
the stars pass the nodes, or the 
nodes appear to fall back, owing to 
the earth’s progression along with 
the sun in the grand solar orbit. 

Another means of determining the 
sun’s distances, besides those de¬ 
scribed in articles Astronomy and 
Philosophy, is to divide the orbit 
motion found by the fall in a second, 
by 1.57079, which gives the propor¬ 
tion of the radius, and then multi¬ 
plying by the seconds, in which a 
quadrant is performed, it gives 93,- 
026,240 as the mean distance. 

Tables of Decimals:— 

1.?. is .05 of one pound. 

Id. is .0041666 of one pound. 

1 farthing is .0010416 of a pound. 

1 inch is .08333 of a foot. 

1 lb. is .008928 of a cwt. 

1 osz. is .000558 of a cwt. 

1 yard is .000568 of a mile. 

1 inch is .0000158 of a mile. 

1 day is .002739 of a year. 

1 minute is .000694 of a day. 

1 dwt. is .004166 of a lb. troy. 

1 grain is .000173 of a lb. troy. 

Decimals of Fractions. 


•t- _ .5 
i = .25 
f = -75 
£ = -125 
f = .375 
l = .625 


£=•2 

4- == .142857 &c 
-L = .1111 &c. 

= .090909 &c. 
-jL- = .08333 &c. 


I = .875 -Jg- = .0625 
± = 333 &c. ^- 0 = - 05 
= .666 &c. = .041666 &c. 

Tables of sines and tangents, and 
of natural sines and tangents, are not 
always accessible; the following 
proportions between the sides of tri¬ 
angles whose hypothenuse is 1000 
for every two-degrees, may therefore 


be useful. 

Angle 

Degrees. 

Sine or 
Perp. 

Cos. or 
Base. 

1 

17 

999 

3 

52 

998 

5 

87 

996 

7 

121 

992 

9 

156 

983 

11 

191 

982 

13 

225 

974 

15 

259 

966 

17 

292 

956 

19 

326 

946 

21 

359 

934 

23 

391 

920 

25 

423 

906 

27 

434 

891 

29 

485 

875 

31 

515 

857 

33 

545 

839 

35 

574 

819 

37 

602 

799 

39 

629 

777 

41 

656 

754 

43 

682 

731 

45 

707 

707 

For the next 45 degrees they are to 


be taken conversely, or base and cos. 
for perpendicular and sine. Interme¬ 
diate degrees, or parts of degrees, may 
be found, without material errour, 
by the mean proportional: for ex¬ 
ample, 65 degrees, ten more than 45, 
is equal to ten less, or 35 degrees, the 
base being taken as the perpendicu¬ 
lar; and if 36 degrees were wanted, 
574 added to 602 is 1176, the half of 
which is 588, which is the perpendicu¬ 
lar for 36 degrees, or the base for 54 
degrees, and so the half of 36 and 35 
would be 35£° and 542°. 

A pump 10 feet above a well, with 
7 inches bore, will discharge 70 gal¬ 
lons a minute; and at 30 feet and 4 
inches, 23 gallons. 

In the Roman notation, Iq or D, 
stood for 500; and C after them, for 
as many hundreds as C’s; CIq, or M, 
was 1000, with C’s for odd hundreds. 

M, with a dash over it. was one 










MATHEMATICKS AND PHY SICKS. 


•39 


Wiillion; X, with a dash over it, 

10,000. The 3 is tenfold the number 
to which it is added. 

The length of strings and vibrations 
in a second of time, of the eight notes 
and four semitones of an octave, are— 


C. 

Length. 

V ibrations. 

• 480 

B. 

• • 530 • 

• 453 

B flat • • • 

• - 561 •• 

• 428 

A .. 

■ • • 595 • 

■ 404 

G sharp • • • 

• • 630 • 

• 381 

G. 

• • 667 • 

• 360 

F sharp • • ■ 

• • 707 • 

• 339 

F. 

. . . 749 • 

• 320 

E. 

■ • • 794 . 

• 302 

E flat • • • 

- - • 841 . 

- 285 

D.. 

• * • 891 • 

• 269 

C sharp • • - 

■ • • 944 . 

• 254 

C again being 1 and 240 


Some writers assign 30 as the low- 


<est, and 14000 as the highest number 
of distinguishable vibrations in a 
second, in producing tones on musi¬ 
cal strings. 

Rate of Interest , in even-shillings, at 
different prices of 3 per cent, consols: 


91* to 93 - 

31. 5 s. 

90*-to 91* . 

31. 6s. 

87$ to 90*. 

31. 7s. 

87* to 88 j . 

31. 8s 

86 $ to 87*. 

31. 9*. 

85* to 86 $. 

3/. 10s. 

84 to 85* . 

3/. 11s. 

82| to 84 . 

3/. 12s. 

811 to 82f . 

3/. 135. 

80* to 81f.. 

31. 14s. 

79* to 80* . 

31. 15s. 

78* to 79* . 

3/. 16s. 

77* to 78* . 

3/. 17s. 

76* to 77* . 

3/. 18s. 

75* to 76* . 

3/. 19s. 

74* to 75* . 

4/. 0s. 

73* to 74* . 

4/. Is. 


Higher or lower rates may be esti¬ 
mated from the above, by adding or 
substracting. 

When the stocks yield 4 per eent., 
government sell an annuity of 20 1., 
for 10 years, at 163/. 10s. 3 d .; for 20 
years, 273/. 11s. \d .; 30 years, for 
.347/. 12s. 2d .; 40 years, for 397/. 8 s. 
11 d .; and, 50 years, for430ZL 19s. 8 c/.; 
or for life, at 15, for 362/. 14s. 8 c/. 
males; or 383/. 11s. females; at 30, 
for 331/. 19s. Id. males; and 351/. 14s. 
tod. females; at 60, for 198/. 14s. 4 d. 
and 229/. 6 s. 11 d .; and in proportion 
to price of stocks as above. 

Half the length of a second’s pen¬ 


dulum multiplied by 9.87 is the fall of 

a body. 

Two pendulums at Paris made 
85922.06 and 85933.83 vibrations in a 
mean solar day. And the same in 
London gave 85933.29 and 85945.85; 
12" being the increase in London. 

A leaden ball fell from the cupola of 
St. Paul’s to the pavement, 272 feet, 
in4.25", which squared, is 18.06; then 
272 

= 15 feet per second. But 17 


18.06 

feet being allowed for resistance, it is 

taken as = 16 feet per second 

in air; and as 16.08 is vacuo. A 
hollow glass globe was 6 " in falling 
the same height. 

The seconds pendulum, in London, 
is 39.12 inches; at the equator, 39.027; 
and 45°, is 39.111; and at 75°, is 
39.187. The same principle makes it, 
at the poles, 39.197. 

Eclipses return in the very^same 
order every 18 years and 11 days, 
supposing four leap-years in the in¬ 
terval; and, if five, then 10 days. 
Other cycles of motion, however, 
vary the phenomena or measure. The 
moon’s shadow is less than 170 miles 
broad; but the eclipse is visible, in 
degree, for 2000 miles: 500 miles di¬ 
ameter gives 11 digits, and then a 
digit less every 250 miles. 

The Eclipses - of the sun for this 
century, visible in England, are as 
under: 

July 17, 1833, at 7 in the morning. 

Feb. 21,1841, at 11 ditto. 

July 18,-•, at 2 afternoon. 

May 6 , 1845, at § past 10 morning. 

May 17, 1863, at 5 afternoon. 

Oct. 8 , 1866, at 5 afternoon. 

Dec. 31, 1880, at 2 afternoon. 

Mar. 27, 1895, at 10 morning. 

The principal Eclipses of the moon, 
i. e. total, visible in England will be as 
under: 

July 2,1833, at 1 morning. 

Dec. 26,1833, at 10 afternoon. 

April 20, 1837, at 9 afternoon. 

Oct. 13,1837, at * past 11 afternoon. 

Nov. 24,1844, at 12 at night. 

Oct. 13,1856, at * past 11 afternoon. 

June 1, 1863, at 12 at night. 

July 12,1870, at 11 afternoon. 

Feb. 27,1877, at * past 7 afternoon. 

Aug. 23,1877, at * past 11 afternoon. 

Oct. 4,1884, at * past 10 afternoon. 

Jan. 28,1888, at * past 11 afternoon 

Nov. 16,1891, at 4 past 12 morning 































40 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


May 11,1892, at § past 11 afternoon. 
July 3,1898, at £ past 9 afternoon. 
Dec. 27, 1898, at 12 at night. 

The two next transits of Venus will 
be in December 1874 and 1882. 

Longitude is converted into time, 
by calling every 15 degrees an hour, 
(typ-) every degree 4 minutes of time 
and every 15 minutes of a de¬ 
gree, one minute of time. 

Fall of Bodies in 12 
parts of seconds. 

193 


Inches. 


5"'X 


= 1.34 


= 5.36 


= 12.06 


= 21.44 


= 33.64 


= 48.25 


65.68 

85.69 
108.56 
134.01 
162.12 
193. 0 


144 

193 

10"' X — 

36 

193 

15'" X — 

16 

193 

20'" X — 

9 

193 

25'" X — 

576 

193 

30'" X — 

4 

35"' X 193 X .3403 = 

40'" X 193X -444 = 

45'" X 193X -6625 = 

50'" X 193X -7 = 

55"' X 193X-84 = 

60"' or 1" X 193X-1 = 

The intersection of three lines, 
drawn from the angles of a trian¬ 
gle, to the middle of the opposite 
sides, is its centre of gravity and 
percussion. * If the lines bisect the 
angles, it is the centre of the in¬ 
scribed circle; and if perpendiculars 
to the opposite, the intersection is 
the centre of the circumscribing 
circle* 

Cannon-balls moving 1600, 1200, 
1500, and 1060 feet per second, or 
near the mouth of the gun, pene¬ 
trated elm 20 inches, 15, 30, and 16 
respectively; oak at 1200, 34 feet; 
and earth at 1300,15 feet. The balls 
were from 2 inches to 5| in diameter. 

In sandy soils, the greatest force 
of a pile-engine will not drive a pile 
above 15 feet. 

Olive oil at 0° diminishes to 32° 
by .0162, and increases at 72° by 
.0229th ; and at 175° by .0971. 


The differential calculus of Leib¬ 
nitz finds a small quantity, which 
taken an infinity of times is equal to 
a required quantity; and fluxions 
consider momenta as quantities. 
One is expressed by d, as d x, and 
the other by a dot, as x. 

An increase of 2 per cent, in every 
10 years would double mankind in 
350 years. An increase of 5 per cent, 
in 142 years, and of 10 per cent, in 
73 years, of 32 per cent, in 25 years. 
So with decrease, and, if a popula¬ 
tion doubled in any period, it would 
in past time have been in the same 
period, but half, a fourth, &c. a con¬ 
sideration which proves the fallacy 
of the modern population theories. 

A landscape in perspective should 
not include more than an angle of 
60 degrees, or one sixth of the hori¬ 
zon. All lines perpendicular to the 
picture or perspective plane, vanish 
in the point of sight, and the size of 
objects is therefore inversely as their 
distance. 

The vernier scale is 11-tenths di¬ 
vided into 10 equal parts, so that it 
divides a scale of lOths into lOOths, 
where the lines meet even in the two 
scales. 

A man five feet six inches high, on 
the sea-shore or on level ground, 
can see about three miles distant. 

Cassini’s meridian line, at Bo¬ 
logna, is 120 feet long. 

St. Paul’s London, is & 47" W. of 
the Observatory, Greenwich. 

A fall of one-tenth of an inch per 
mile will produce a motion in rivers. 
The greatest velocity is at the sur¬ 
face and in the middle, and the least 
at the bottom and sides. But as the 
velocity increases, the action on the 
sides and bottom increases also. 
The mean velocities are as the area 
of the sections. 

Numbers whose digits are divisi¬ 
ble by 3, are as totals divisible by 3. 
Numbers of 3 places, in ascending 
arithmetical progression, are divisi¬ 
ble by 3. In like manner any total 
composed of series in 3, or its mul¬ 
tiplies 6, 9, or 12 with equal differ¬ 
ences, are divisible by 3. 

The square of every number, end¬ 
ing with 5 or 0, is equal to 2 square 
numbers, divisible by 3 and by 4. 

To determine the number of fixed 
atoms in any bulk by their down¬ 
ward tendency, the hydrometer is a 
very convenient instrument, and it 







4 


MATHEMATICKS AND PHY SICKS. 


gives the specifick gravity within the 

40,000th part. In other cases, on 
being weighed in and out of water, 
as the lost weight in, is to that out, 
so is the specifick gravity of water to 
that of the body. 

One link of a surveyor’s chain is 
7.92 inches, and a chain of 100 links 
is 22 yards, 10 chains being a fur¬ 
long, and 80 a mile. 625 links, or 
301 yards, is a pole or perch, 40 poles 
is a rood, and 4 roods, or 100,000 
links, or 10 chains, or 4840 yards is 
an acre. 

In cross multiplication 12 fourths 
is a third, 12 thirds is a second, and 
12 seconds an inch. Feet into inches 
are inches, and into seconds are se¬ 
conds; inches by inches are seconds, 
and by seconds are thirds; seconds 
by seconds are fourths. 

A hide of land was 100 or 120 
acres, and 5 was a knight’s fee. 
Doomsday book reckoned 243000 
hides in cultivation. 

A standing tree is measured by 
squaring ith of the girth, and multi¬ 
plying it by the height of the trunk. 

The length of any arc of a circle 
is found by multiplying the degrees 
in the arc by 3.1416 times the radius, 
and dividing by 180. 

The area of a triangle whose sides 
only are given, is found by taking 
half their sum, substracting each 
side, and then multiply the half con¬ 
tinually by the three remainders, 
and the square root of that product 
is the area. 

The area of a circle is the product 
of the diameter and circumference 
divided by 4. 

To find the area of a spherical tri¬ 
angle, multiply the difference be¬ 
tween the sum of its three angles 
and two right angles by the radius 
of the sphere. 

To find the area of the segment of 
a parabola, multiply the base by the 
length, and take fds. 

For an ellipsis, multiply the pro¬ 
duct of the two axes by .7854. 

For the solid contents of a cylin¬ 
der, the area of the base by the 
height. For a cone or pyramid, it is 
one-third. 

For the area of spheres or parts, 
the circumference by the height, 
whether sphere, zone, or segment. 

The solidity of a sphere is fds of 
the circumference by the diameter; 
or the cube of the diameter by .5236. 

D 2 


A paraboloid is the area of the 
base by the height and half the pro¬ 
duct. 

A spheroid is the multiple of the 
fixed axis by the square of the re¬ 
volving axis, and by .5236. 

The area of a circle whose diame¬ 
ter is one, is equal to a square whose 
sides are .88622692: and the square 
whose sides are 1, is equal to a cir 
cle whose diameter is 1.112837917. 

Neper’s and Brigg's Logarithms. 
Nos. Neper’s log. Brigg’s log. 

1 0,000000 0,000000 

2 0,693147 0,301030 

3 0,098612 0,477121 

4 1,386294 0,602060 

5 1,609438 0,698970 

6 1,791759 0,778151 

7 1,945910 0,845098 

8 2,079441 0,903090 

9 2,197225 0,954240 

10 2,302646 1,000000 

Dr. Hutton, assuming the princi¬ 
ple or miracle of attraction, com¬ 
puted the earth’s total density to be 
5.24 times that of water, or half that 
of silver; then La Place, to recon¬ 
cile attraction to facts, estimated the 
sun as ebony; Mercury equal to fluid 
quicksilver; Venus to Zinc; Mars to 
diamond; Jupiter to milk; Saturn 
to fir; and Herschel to amber! 

To square the circle nearly, for 
the use of mechanics, draw diame¬ 
ters of the circle at right angles to 
each other, and produce them each 
way, beyond the circle, till the pro¬ 
duced part of each diameter is equal 
to one-fourth of the radius; and the 
four points, when conjoined, form a 
square nearly equal to the area of 
the circle. 

A mechanical and universal rule 
of proportion, founded on cross mul¬ 
tiplication, of the products of con¬ 
trary cause and effect being equal, 
answering by one direct, easy, and 
general method, every thing that can 
be resolved by the direct, inverse, 
and every way compounded, rule of 
three.—1. Set down, in the first part 
of a first line, all the leading terms 
or conditions of a question, in any 
order, considered as the first cause, 
with the word or words of affection 
thereto; then set down, in the se¬ 
cond part of the first line, the fol¬ 
lowing terms or conditions, in any 
order, considered as the first effect 
produced by the first cause.—2. Set 
down, in the first part of a second 






42 MATHEMATICKS AND PHYSICKS. 


line, at some distance from, and di¬ 
rectly under the terms of the first 
line, the second like preceding terms 
or conditions each under each, in the 
same order with those above them, 
considered as the second cause, with 
the same word or words of affection 
as before; and then set down, in the 
second part of the same line, the 
second like following conditions, 
each under each, in the same order 
with those above them, considered 
as the second effect produced by its 
preceding or second cause; always 
marking the term sought, in this 
second line, where it is found defi¬ 
cient, by a star, or asterisk.* Put 
unity for a term only understood.— 
3. Draw contrary or cross lines; i. e. 
from the terms in the first part of the 
first line to the terms in the second 
part of the second line; and from the 
terms in the second part of the first 
line, to the terms in the first part of 
the second line.—4. Multiply the 
term or terms in the part of the 
second line wherein the star term is 
found, (whether in cause or effect,) 
into the contrary terms in the first 
line, (standing at contrary ends of 
the same cross lines) for adivisor.-- 
5. Multiply, also, all the terms to¬ 
gether, standing at contrary ends of 
the other cross line, for a dividend.— 
The quotient arising from this divisor 
and dividend, after reducing the frac¬ 
tion to its least or lowest terms, by 
dividing the dividend and divisor by 
different equal quantities, will give the 
true answer in all cases whatsoever. 


Always state the question so, that 
the first and third terms given may 
be of the same name, when thefourth 
term sought will be of the same 
name with the second. The rule is, 
if more be required to mark the less 
extreme, if less to mark the greater 
extreme, for a divisor and to multiply 
the other terms together for a divi¬ 
dend, when the quotient will be the 
answer.— Heath's Palladium , 1767. 


A cubick foot weighs as under:— 


Porphyry lbs. 179 
Gray Granite 171 
Marble 172 
Portland 151 
Yorkshire 156 


Derbyshire Zta.145 

Tafa 

76 

Pumice 

38 

Brick 

97 


The weight to crush porphyry is 
640,000 lbs.; gray granite, 165,000; 
marble, 100,000; Portland stone, 82,- 


000; and brick 34,000 to 14,000 per 
foot. 

The specifick gravity of water at 5° 
is .9998; at 34 and 44° is .9994; at 
39° is 1; at 54° is .99951; at 90° is 
.99511; at 100° is .99313; at 182° is 
.969; and at 210° is .95848. The ex¬ 
pansion being at 34 and 44° from 
.00002 at 1° to .00005; at 100° being 
.00692; and at 212° being .04332. 
From 39° it expands both ways. 


SPECIFICK GRAVITIES. 


Agate, oriental 



2.8 

Alabaster, white 



2.73 

Amber, yellow 



1.073 

Antimony 



6.72 

Barytes . 



4.4 

Basalt . 



2.98 

Bismuth 



9.8 *• 

Bone, ox 



1.656 

Box 



1.03 

Brass . 



7.824 

Brick . 



2. 

Butter . 



0.9423 

Cedar • 



0.56 

Chalk • • 



2.252 

Cinnabar 


• 

7.786 

Cobalt • 


• 

7.645 

Coal 


• 

1.308 

Copper • 



7.7 

Cork 



0.24 

Diamond 



3.52 

Ebony • 



1.29 

Elm 


• 

0.671 

Fat of beef 


• 

0.9232 

-mutton 


• 

0.9235 

Feldspar 


$ 

2.5 

Fir 


• 

0.6 

Flint 



2.59 

Garnet • 



4.085 

Glass, Crown • 



2.52 

-Flint • 


• 

3.00 

-Plate • 


t 

2.71 

-Bottle • 


• 

2.732 

Gold, pure 



19.2587 

-Sovereign 



17.629 

Granite, red • 



2.654 

gray . 



2.728 

Gunpowder • 



0.836 

Gypsum 



2.167 

Honey • • 



1.45 

Hornblende • 



3.6 

Jasper • • 

• 


2.68 

Iron, fused 

• 

• 

7.2 

-, bar 

• 

• 

7.68 

-, magnetick 


• 

4.52 

-, stone 



4.323 

Ivory 



1.825 

Lead 


• 

11.352 

-, black 

• 

• 

5.77 

Lignum Vitas 

t 

• 

1.33 















THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


Limestone 

1.386 

and 2.72 

Mahogany 

. 

1.06 

Magnesia, Hydrate 

2.33 

Manganese • 


6.85 

Marble, Carrara 
Mercury at 60° 


2.716 


13.58 

-solid, 40° below 

0 15.612 

Nickel ■> 


9.33 

Nitre 


1.7 

Oak 


1.17 

Pearls • 


2.683 

Peet, hard 


1.329 

Phosphorus 


1.714 

Platina • 


20.722 

Porcelain, China 


2.38 

Porphyry, green 


2.676 

Pumice stone 


0.9145 

Q.uartz • 


2.647 

Rock crystal • 


2.653 

Ruby 


4.283 

Serpentous 


2.43 

Silver, virgin 


10.474 

Silver, shilling 
Slate clay 


10.534 

• 

2.67 

Spar, fluor 

• 

3.156 

Stalactite 

• 

2.324 

Steel • 


7.84 

Stone, paving 


2.416 

-, grinding 


2.143 

Sugar, loaf 


1.606 

Sulphur 

Tin 


2.033 


7.17 

Tin, hammered 


7.519 

Topaz • 


4.01 

Tungsten 


4.355 

Wax, Bees’ • 


0.9648 

Zinc, pure 


7.1908 

FLUIDS. 

Acid, Nitrick • 

1.27 

-, Muriatick 

-, Sulphurick 


1.94 


1.84 

Alcohol • 


0.837 

-, do. pure 

Beer 


0.829 

1.034 

Blood, human 


1.054 

Cider 


1.018 

Ether, Sulph. 


0.73 

-, Nitrick • 


0.908 

Milk, women’s 


1.02 

-, cow’s • 


1.032 

Oil, Olive 


0.9153 

—, Linseed • 


0.94 

—, Whale 


0.9233 

Turpentine, spirits 
Urine 


0.87 

1.02 

Vinegar 


1.025 

Water distilled 


1.000 

- , sea 

-■, spring 

Wine, Port • 


1.026 

1.0017 

0.997 

-, Sherry 


. 0.992 . 


43 


Wine, Claret • • • 0.994 

GASES. 

Air (1.2 water 1000) • 1.000 

Nitrous acid gas • • 3.176 

Chlorine gas • • 2.47 

Nitrous oxide • • 1.614 

Carbonick acid • • 1.512 

Sulphuretted hydrogen • 1.19 

Oxygen • 1,104 and 1.0359 

Nitrous gas • • • 1.094 

Olefiant • • • 0.978 

Azote • 0.969 

Carbonick oxide . . 0.957 

Steam .... 0.6235 

Ammoniacal . . . 0.59 

Carburetted hydrogen . 0.555 

Phosphuretted. hydrogen 0.435 

Hydrogen . . 0.074 and 0.0721 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 

Animal organizations consist of ten 
classes, depending on their bony 
structure, their warm or cold blood, 
their mode of rearing their young, 
lungs or gills, and having bony or 
no bony parts. 

1. Mammalia have a double heart 
and warm blood, with an internal 
bony skeleton and brain, and they 
suckle their young. 

2. Birds have the same, but do not 

suckle their young. * 

3. Reptiles have lungs, and jointed 
or divided members, but a single 
heart and cold blood, with a brain 
and cartilaginous skeleton. 

4. Serpents have lungs, and a 
single heart and cold blood, but no 
jointed members, with a brain and 
skeleton. 

5. Fishes have gills and fins, and 
no lungs, with a single heart and 
cold blood, with a brain and bony or 
cartilaginous skeleton; and no joint¬ 
ed or articulated members. 

All these having vertebrae, are 
called Vertebral Animals. 

But the following have no internal 
skeleton, and no brain, as— 

6. Crustacea, with articulated 
members, and a circulatory system, 
with gills or branchiae. 

7. Insects, like the former, but 
with trachiae and no circulating sys¬ 
tem. 

8 . Mollusca, with simple nerves; 
















M THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


9. Worms, with knotted nerves. 

10. Zoophytes, with no nerves and 
no vessels, but without articulated 
members, and no skeleton or brain. 

The last five are, therefore, called 
Inverteeral Animals. 

The Linnaean arrangement embra¬ 
ces Minerals, Vegetables, and Ani¬ 
mals, in Classes, Orders, Genera, 
Species, and Varieties, with names 
and characters. 

In Animated Nature he has six 
classes, consisting of Mammalia in 
7 orders, 47 genera, and 577 species; 
Aves, 6 orders, 90 genera, and 2641 
species; Amphibia, 2 orders 19 gene¬ 
ra, and 366 species; Pisces, 6 orders, 
66 genera, and 889 species; Insecta, 
7 orders, 131 genera, and 10896 spe¬ 
cies; and Vermes, 5 orders, 118 ge¬ 
nera, and 4036 species. In all 19405 
species. 

Mammalia are divided into 13 or¬ 
ders by Cuvier, 10 by Blumenbach, 
and 7 by Linnaeus. 

Linnaeus distinguishes birds into 6 
orders: Accipitres , angular project¬ 
ing beaks; Piece , compressed beaks, 
with climbing feet; Ansares, beak 
with skin, and broad at end; Gral- 
Ice , with three or four toes; Gallince, 
convex bill and arched upper mandi¬ 
ble; Paperes, conick and pointed 
bills. 

Birds are divided by Cuvier into 6 
orders, by Blumenbach into 8, by 
Linnaeus into 6. 


Order 4, Neuroptera, as dragon 

flies. 

Order 5, Hymenoptera, as bees 
and saw flies. 

Order 6, Diptera, with two wings, 
as gnats, flies, gad flies, &c. 

Order 7, Aptera, without wings, as 
fleas, lice, spiders, mites, centipedes, 
crabs, &c. 

Fishes are, by Linnaeus, divided 
into five orders: Abdominales, Apo- 
des, Cartalaginii, Ingulares, Thora- 
caci. Air is as necessary to them as 
to animals, and they respire in sleep 
twenty-five times in a minute. The 
air is extracted from the water by an 
apparatus called branchial , small, 
but extensive when spread out. They 
die in water deprived of its air, under 
ice, or on having their gills tied up. 

Amphibia are cold blooded, and 
their lungs and heart are differently 
formed from warm blooded animals. 
Their lungs are like bladders or 
membranes, and the heart has only 
one ventricle, with a vein to convey 
it In and an artery to carry it out. 

Their limbs and tail destroyed, grow 
again. They are torpid in winter, 
freeze with and in water, and revive 
when it melts. Frogs do not procre¬ 
ate till four years old, and tortoises 
live from one to two hundred years. 
Toads revive after being buried in 
rocks for countless centuries. Only 
a sixth of known serpents are poi¬ 
sonous. 


Insects are divided by modern en¬ 
tomologists into 680 genera, and 
every genus in to m any species. The 
study of each genus, its habits, econo¬ 
my, and wonderful ingenuity, accor¬ 
ding to its powers ana the sphere of 
its existence, has afforded employ¬ 
ment for years; and this branch of 
nature alone is so infinitely varied as 
to render the life of man unequal to 
its perfect knowledge. 

Linnaeus adopted 5 orders, defined 
by the wings—1. Coleoptera, with 
covered wings; 2. Angioptera, unco¬ 
vered wings; 3. Hemiptera; 4. Ap¬ 
tera; and, 5. Vermes. This system 
he afterwards varied as follows :— 

Order 1, Coleoptera, as beetles. 

Order 2, Hemiptera, as bugs, lo¬ 
custs, and cockroaches. 

Order 3, Lepidoptera, as butter¬ 
flies and moths. 


Amphibia are divided into two or¬ 
ders, Reptiles and Serpents ; and 
there are four genera of reptiles, tes- 
tudo, draco, lacerta, and rana; and 
nine of serpents, crotalus, boa, colu¬ 
ber, angeris, arnphisbeena, caecelia, 
achrocordus, hyarus, and langaya. 

Some amphibia have branchas like 
fishes, and lungs like land animals. 
The larvae of frogs and some other 
species are thus formed. 

Humboldt makes the species of in¬ 
sects 44000, of fishes 2500, reptiles 
700, birds 4000 and of mamiferous 
animals 5000. 

Adamson’s great work on Natural 
History contained an arrangement 
of 40000 species, with a vocabulary 
of 200000 words, and 70000 figures 
drawn from the three kingdoms of 
nature. 

Swammerdam, a Dutch philoso- 





45 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


pher, printed his great work on in¬ 
sects in 1669. He divided insects 
into four classes, as spiders, &c. 
which include the modern classes 
Crustacea, myriapoda, arachnoida, 
and acari. His second class con¬ 
sisted of those who appear perfect on 
leaving the egg, and have no wings 
till they shed their skin, and it in¬ 
cludes the orthoptera, dermaptera, 
dicteroptera, hemiptera, and some 
of the neuroptera. In his third 
class he includes those hatched, as 
caterpillars, which change into a 
chrysalis, and remain so till perfect; 
it includes the coleopteraand aptera. 
His fourth class includes those who, 
on attaining their pupa state, retain 
their skin, as the nymenoptera and 
diptera. 

Ray’s work on Insects was pub¬ 
lished. in 1712. He adopted two di¬ 
visions, those which undergo no 
change, and those which pass 
through the state of larva. 

Valasnieri, in 1730, distributed in¬ 
sects into four groupes. 1. Those 
who live on plants. 2. Those who 
live in water. 3. Those who live 
among stones. And 4. Those who 
subsist on animal remains. 

In 1780, Mr. Drury formed a mu¬ 
seum of 11000 species of insects, giv¬ 
ing sixpence for all that might be 
brought him. It was afterwards sold 
for 600/. 

Donovan’s valuable work on Bri¬ 
tish Insects extends to eighteen 
volumes. 

Professor Martin published an ac¬ 
count of 500 species of coleopterus 
insects found in England. M. Fran- 
cilec collected 2000 species of the 
genus scarabacus. Mr. Jones, in 
1794, announced a history of the ge¬ 
nus papilio, in which he professed to 
describe 1400 species, 1000 of which 
he alleged he had seen. 

The tusk or tooth of the male ele¬ 
phant. harder than horn and less 
brittle than bone, weighs from 120 to 
200 lbs., and is brought from Ceylon 
and Africa. 100 parts contain 24 ge¬ 
latine, 64 carbonate of lime. 

Young elephants and females have 
no tusks, but are often killed in wan¬ 
tonness. The teeth imported have 
generally been found in the woods. 
Elephants are from nine to twelve 
feet high. They swim with ease, and 


live on vegetables. They respire and 
eat and drink through the trunk, 
which is so sensible as to pick up a 
pea or a pin. The young are three 
feet high, and the female seldom lias 
twins. They grow for 30 or 40 years, 
and live 200 or 300, some say 400 
years. 

Under the genus Felis, Linnaeus 
classes the lion, tiger, panther, leop¬ 
ard, ounce, ocelot, cat, serval, lynx, 
and caracal. 

There are 2500 known species of 
fishes. 

There are 69 genera of acarides or 
mites. 

The rhinoceros is twelve feet long, 
with a horn three feet, and a skin so 
hard as to turn a sabre. They are 
solitary, and perfectly harmless, liv¬ 
ing entirely on vegetables. They are 
believed to be the unicorn of the Jews. 
One species has a smaller horn. 

Pliny and others relate that Attilius, 
a Roman general, killed a serpent 120 
feet long, near Utica. 

Bears are of three species, totally 
distinct in their characters and hab¬ 
its. The black bear is a docile, harm¬ 
less creature, living on roots and 
fruits, and mischievous only to bees, 
being very fond of honey. The 
brown bear on the contrary, is car¬ 
nivorous and ferocious to other ani¬ 
mals, but never attacks man unless 
first attacked. The white bear is 
often 12 feet long, ferocious in de¬ 
fence of its young against the more 
ferocious attacks of sailors, but prey¬ 
ing chiefly on fish, and occasionally 
on seals. He is torpid in the snow 
during the winter. Each species is 
very sensitive and sagacious, and the 
unfortunate captive, the black bear, 
is made to perform feats for the di¬ 
version of civilized children. The 
young follow the dam for a year, and 
there are numerous anecdotes of their 
interesting attachment, when as¬ 
sailed by the greatest savages, and 
most remorseless of all savage ani¬ 
mals. 

There are four classes of apes or 
simia, called apes, baboons, mon¬ 
keys and japajocs, in 63 species. The 
ourang-outang walks erect, and is 
often six feet nigh and very power¬ 
ful, capable of imitating all the habits 
of man. The Barbary ape is known 
for his agility as an object of exhibi- 








THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


46_ 

tion. The great baboon and dog¬ 
faced baboon are nearly 4 feet, and 
the preacher monkey, from a tree 
harangues, or howls, at monkey 
auditors. They all live on fruits and 
vegetables, and are harmless unless 
attacked. 

It is a peculiarity of wolves, that 
they avoid passing under any thing, 
therefore shun woods, and seldom 
pass through hedges. 

When wolves cross a river, they 
follow one another directly in aline, 
the second holding the tail of the 
first in its mouth; the third that of 
the second, and so of the rest. This 
figure was chosen by the Greeks to 
denote the year, composed of twelve 
months following one another, which 
they denominated Lycabas, that is 
the march of the wolves. 

Abbe Pluche. 

The full grown kangaroo weighs 
150 pounds, and from the nose to 
the rump is 4 or 5 feet long, with a 
tail 3 feet. It uses its short fore feet 
as hands, like squirrels, and leaps on 
its hind legs 14 or 16 feet at a bound, 
faster than a dog can run. The female 
has a pouch for its young, and no 
creature can be more harmless. 

The kangaroo displays a maternal 
feeling interesting to the moral sense. 
They are provided with an external 
pouch or bag into which the young 
retire in case of an alarm, and. if the 
mother is wounded, she assists her 
offspring in its escape; on regaining 
a place of safety, she caresses it to 
dissipate its alarm, and if mortally 
wounded by any black or white 
savage, her attention is entirely di¬ 
rected to the security of her young. 

Bull fights in Spain are equivalent 
to the fights of gladiators among the 
Romans, which at once disgraced 
and brutalized that people. Tne am¬ 
phitheatre for this atrocious amuse¬ 
ment, as it is called, is 330 feet in di¬ 
ameter, with an area of 225 feet, and 
silting and standing room for fifteen 
thousand spectators. The assailants 
are called picadores, are on horse¬ 
back, and provided with a long spear. 
The bull soon destroys the horse in 
the most horrid manner, and then 
other combatants on foot come in 
who carry cloaks to distract the 
bull till the picadore has procured a 
fresh horse, when the combat is re¬ 
newed. 


When a cow of the black cattle 

breed has two calves, one a bull and 
the other not, this other never breeds, 
and is of different character in size 
and habits, and known among far¬ 
mers as a free martin, having the 
bellow of an ox, and no sexual pro¬ 
pensities. Earth worms, &c. are of 
both sexes; and caterpillars and 
larva generally are of no sex till they 
change. All plants are hermaphro¬ 
dite, except monoecia and di'oecia. 
Mules and other mixtures do not 
propagate, and some cause of the 
same kind affects branches of the 
human family as stops to population; 
and hence the continual extinction of 
families; the male particularly be¬ 
ing without offspring, as impotent 
or withered branches. Swammer¬ 
dam traces this defect to luxury, and 
asserts that it arises oftener in royal 
and noble races than in others, their 
branches becoming continually bar¬ 
ren or withered; and our extinct 
peerages and changes of royal lines 
justify his observation. We have no 
family of rank above 4 or 500 years 
old, while among yeomanry, succes¬ 
sions may often be traced for 10 or 
1200 years. 

Mules are more hardy and longer 
lived than horses, bear heavier bur¬ 
dens, and are more sure footed. They 
are the product of a horse and she- 
ass, of an ass or mare, but do not 
propagate. 

The lion has often been seen to de¬ 
spise contemptible enemies, and to 
ardon their insults, when it was in 
is power to punish them. He has 
been seen to spare the lives of such 
as were thrown to be devoured by 
him, to live peaceably with them, to 
afford them a part of his subsistence, 
and sometimes to want food himself 
rather than deprive them of that life 
which his generosity had spared. 

Goldsmith. 

Beavers are among the most saga¬ 
cious of animals, and being gregari¬ 
ous, they claim sympathy by their 
social habits from every man who is 
a man. With their small paws and 
tails, they construct curious habita¬ 
tions, solid and strong. They choose 
a river, and form a dam across it with 
perfect foresight as to water way, 
strength, &c. contriving to drive 
strong stakes three feet into the bed 
of the river. They live chiefly on 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


roots, of which they form magazines 

for the winter, and sufficient for 
their village of 18 or 20 tenements. 
European merchants seduce the sav¬ 
age Indians, for rum and tobacco, 
to hunt and slaughter these harm¬ 
less creatures for nats, though there 
are better materials; and for the 
castor, articles of trifling value com¬ 
pared with the outrage on humanity. 

The wild boar is the parent of the 
common hog, but smaller, less glut¬ 
tonous, and living chiefly on vegeta¬ 
bles. They are only dangerous when 
attacked, and then the means of de¬ 
fence are tusks ten inches long. 

The camel in the east, is the most 
valuable servant of man. It eats little 
and drinks less; the milk makes 
cheese and butter; shoes and harness 
are made of his skin; and of his hair 
tents and clothing; while for burden, 
he is the ship of the desert, and his 
power exceeds that of the horse in 
travelling. 

Camels are from 6 to 7 feet high to 
the top of the protuberance on the 
back, and they weigh from 3 to 4 
cwt. The Bactrian camel is the 
largest, and has two bunches on its 
back. The dromedary of the Arabi¬ 
ans has but one, and is the most 
common. The bunch on the back is 
glandular, and not connected with 
the spine. They move both the feet 
on the same side, and therefore jolt 
their riders. They require little and 
coarse food, and live for 10 or 15 davs 
without water. They kneel to take 
up their load, and carry from 500 to 
1500 lbs. They have cavities in the 
stomach which retain water, or as 
some suppose, a second stomach. 
Their average pace is 2£ miles an 
hour. The deserts could not be tra¬ 
versed without them. Dromedaries 
are swifter than Bactrian camels, 
and without a load go 6 or 8 miles 
an hour for 10 or 12 hours. Caravans 
consist of from 1 to 4000, and many 
Arabs possess 4 or 500. The Tartars 
employ them in wagons: they cast 
their hair every year, and it is made 
into cloths, stockings, shawls, car¬ 
pets, &e. Their useful lives extend 
from 40 to 50 years. 

It is computed that, in an ordinary 
way, a dromedary will perform a 
journey of 500 miles in four days. 

Dr. Gall relates an anecdote of a 
dog which was taken from Vienna 


_ 47 

to England, escaped to Dover, got 
on board a vessel, landed at Calais, 
and after accompanying a gentle¬ 
man to Mentz, returned to Vienna. 

The hedge-hog, is an inoffensive 
animal, often barbarously treated by 
the vulgar: they live on roots and 
insects, in holes in banks, and roots 
of trees with a mossy bed. It is tor¬ 
pid in winter, and rolls itself in a 
prickly ball if in danger. 

The badger is another perfectly 
harmless animal, and the object of 
brutal attacks by the lowest of the 
people. They are about two feet long, 
and live under ground, feeding on 
roots, frogs, ana worms, and per¬ 
fectly inoffensive; yet, to bait a 
badger with dogs is a disgraceful 
sport of the vulgar in most parts of 
England. 

The hare is a timid, but very sen¬ 
sible animal; it cries like a child 
when caught in a snare, and ex¬ 
claims rafe with human distinctness 
when worried by ferocious dogs and 
hunters. It lives 7 years, and is 
often tamed. 

That harmless South American 
animal, the Armadillo, when in dan- 
er,. rolls itself into a ball and very 
ard. 

When a porcupine is irritated, he 
erects his quills, but does not dart or 
shoot them. 

The Java squirrel flies from tree to 
tree, by a membrane stretched like a 
sail. They are 18 inches long. 

Sheep in wild pastures, practise 
self-defence, by an array in which 
rams stand foremost in concert, with 
ewes and lambs in the centre of a hol¬ 
low square. 

Mice will live entirely without 
water; for though, says Dr.Priestley, 
I have kept them for three or four 
months, and have offered them water 
several times, they would never taste 
it; and yet they continued in perfect 
health. 

Black rats are tamed in Germany, 
and a bell being put about their necks 
they drive away other rats. The eco- 
nomick rat of Siberia lays in a stock 
of winter provisions. The hamster 
does the same, and to assist him has 
pouches on each side the mouth. 

The behemoth of the Jews was 
either the hippopotamus or mam- 




THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


43_ 

moth, said in the Talmud to feed on 
a thousand mountains in a day; a 
speed which accords with the Indian 
tradition about them, and with that 
of the great and terrible dun cow of 
Dunchurch. 

The sheep in the Shetland Islands 
are calculated at 150,000, and the 
finest of their wool is wrought into 
stockings at two guineas a pair; the 
coarsest very cheap. 

The Angora cat has one eye blue 
and the other yellow. 

Wild asses in Tartary and Thibet 
live in troops, and keep sentry; be¬ 
ing very vigilant, and if attacked, 
swift in escape. 

Hogs and dogs were the only ani¬ 
mals in the newly discovered South 
Sea Islands. The West India Is¬ 
lands contained only a small animal, 
the agouti. The continent of America 
contained many large animals, but 
unlike those on the old; and New 
Holland, &c. &c. only contained 
kangaroos and opossums, unlike 
others any where else. 

Bullocks perform indifferently with 
yokes and bows: in France, they 
draw by the horns. They plough an 
acre per day with ease. Four bul¬ 
locks draw three tons of coals; two 
draw 35 cwt. three miles; and two 
draw 1020 sheaves, weighing 6375 lb. 

Young's Tour, II. 

The horn of the rhinoceros alone is 
erect and perpendicular to the bone, 
on which it stands at right angles, 
thereby possessing greater purchase 
or power as a lever, than any horn 
could possibly have in any other 
position.— Bruce. 

English race horses run at the rate 
of from 55 to 58 miles an hour, or a 
single mile in 62or 63 seconds. Stage 
coaches, with their draught, often 
run 11 or 12 miles an hour. In a pas¬ 
sion for swift travelling, George III. 
always went on journeys 14 or 15 
miles; and his son, the Duke of York, 
used to urge post-horses 16. Bake- 
well’s black draft horses will draw 
above three tons. A horse has 24 
grinders, 4 tushes, or single teeth, 
and 12 front teeth. At five the colts’ 
teeth are shed and the tushes appear; 
at six they are grown, and at eight 
the black marks disappear, and the 
horse is then called aged. 

The pouch of the kangaroo and 


the opossum is a fold in integuments 

of the belly, with an external open¬ 
ing, where the young are received in 
a tender state, and nourished by the 
paps within the cover. 

In New Holland, the quadruped 
which most prevailed at its settle¬ 
ment in 1787 was the kangaroo, with 
very long hind legs and with short 
fore ones, with a sack or bag under 
the belly of the female for the comfort 
and protection of the young. Of these 
animals and opossums there were 50 
dis tinct species; they are very delicate 
and very intelligent animals. Ano¬ 
ther native animal is a quadruped 
with the bill of a duck, called the 
ornithorincus paradoxus ; the birds 
are equally original. The swans are 
black, and the eagles are white, some 
of them 7 feet high: every thing had 
an original character. All the quadru¬ 
peds are like opossums, all the fish 
are like sharks, and the very land, the 
trees, and vegetable products, re¬ 
semble one another in peculiarity. 
Many thousand species of plants 
have been discovered, mostly new. 
Of the gum tree there are 100 differ¬ 
ent species, some of them 150 feet 
high and 40 feet round. There are 
also 100 species of the leafless acacia , 
and these two kinds of trees compose 
the woods of the country. Van Die- 
man’s land lies between lat.41 and 43§ 
south, and is 160 miles long, and 140 
broad. The climate is milder than 
that of England; but in the winter, 
from May to July, the mountains 
are covered with snow. The Euca¬ 
lyptus or gum tree grows to 180 feet 
high and 36 feet round. 

The pip, a disease of poultry, is a 
thin film which grows under the tip 
of the tongue. 

The European wild cat is not con¬ 
sidered as the original of the domes¬ 
tic cat, but a Nubian which passed 
through Egypt into Europe. 

One pair of pigs will increase in six 
years to 119169, taking the increase 
at fourteen times per annum. A 
pair of sheep in the same time would 
be but 64.— Allnut. 

The Aranea avicularia is a spider, 
large enough to catch and kill small 
birds. 

Wolves were destroyed in Eng¬ 
land between 961 and 964. 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


49 


Herrings breed in the Arctick 
Ocean, and in April and May pass 
in immense shoals through the Brit¬ 
ish Seas, followed by fishes and 
birds of prey. The Dogger Bank in 
the North Sea, 190 miles long, is the 
favourite resort of these and of tur¬ 
bot, cod, soles, &c. Other banks in 
the same sea, from Holland to the 
Shetland Islands, are also resorts of 
fish. 

In the Bahamas the violet crab 
lives in the mountains, but spawns 
in the sea, and travels there for the 
purpose; after which the young 
crabs travel to the mountains. 

Cock-chafers, so cruelly abused 
by untaught children, are such pets 
of nature, that they are six years in 
the grub state advancing to matu¬ 
rity. 

Eggs are hatched at 104° of heat. 

Hives yield from 60 to 100 lbs. of 
honey in a season. 

At Coppermine River fish were so 
frozen as to break with the blow of 
a hatchet; but if others were thawed 
before the fire, they revived. 

Spiders have four paps for spin¬ 
ning their threads, each pap having 
1000 holes; and the fine web is itself 
the union of 4000 threads. No spider 
spins more than four webs, and when 
the fourth has been destroyed, they 
seize on the webs of others. 

Perfectly white cats are deaf. 

Young eels migrate from salt wa¬ 
ter to fresh through every obstruction. 

The water beetle which lives on 
the spawn of fish, is said to convey 
it from one pond to another. 

In Upper Canada travellers go in 
cars drawn by three dogs. 

A fish in Java called the jaculator, 
catches flies and insects by squirting 
from its mouth some water, and sel¬ 
dom misses its aim at the distance 
of five or six feet, bringing down a 
fly with a single drop.— Mitchel. 

Earthworms are said to restore 
themselves after being cut with a 
spade. A snail’s head and horns 
grow again in six months. An eye 
of a water newt is replaced in ten 
months. 

The liquor of the oyster contains 
innumerable embryos, with transpa- 

E 


rent shells—120 to the inch; and 
also other animalculse, as three 
kinds of worms, &c. They turn 
over with the tide. The sea-star, 
men, cockles, and muscles are their 
enemies. 

Marmots cut, make, and carry 
hay for their nests. 

Swallows stay in England from 
22 to 26 weeks. 

Other birds from the arctick circle 
pass their winter with us and breed 
there, as the auk, the woodcock, 
snow-bunting, &c. which pass to 
Lapland, Greenland, &c. Some 
migrate by night and others by day, 
ana the males go before the females 
as is well known to bird catchers. 
Some of them are supposed to tra¬ 
vel at the rate of 150 miles an hour, 
and most of them start when the 
wind is fair. At this rate, swallows, 
&c. would reach the African coast in 
a day, and the German ocean would 
be crossed in a morning. The acci¬ 
dents of the journey and of the 
country thin their numbers, for 
fewer return than go; as population 
has increased some do not return at 
all, as egrets, cranes, &c. of which, 
anciently, there were many in Eng¬ 
land. 

M. Hanhert saw a regular battle 
between two species of ants, in 
which they drew up in lines of bat¬ 
tle, with reserves, &c. &c. and 
fought for four hours, taking prison¬ 
ers, and removing the wounded till 
victory decided for one party. 

The poor seals have found advo¬ 
cates in the phrenologists, the size of 
their brains indicating extraordinary 
intelligence, and their docility being 
interesting. 

In Livonia holes are bored in old 
trees to receive swarms of bees, and 
with great success. 

A hog killed at Newmarket, in 
December 1829, weighed 940 lbs. or 
117 stone, or 67 stone 4 lb. horse¬ 
man’s weight. 

Mr. Audubon describes the won¬ 
derful flocks of Pigeons which range 
over North America. He saw 163 in 
21 minutes, all passing in one direc¬ 
tion, at the rate of a mile per minute, 
and he estimated each flock as con¬ 
taining a billion of pigeons, and in 
this way, they were passing for three 
days. 





50 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


A toad was found at Organ in 
France, in a well, which had been 
covered up for 150 years. It was 
torpid, but revived on being exposed. 

When bees, leave a hive, all the 
individuals first reconnoitre the new 
situation in small parties. 

Reptiles become torpid when the 
temperature is below 40°. Snails, 
mollusca, and land testacea do the 
same. In hot and equal climates, 
as between the tropics, instances of 
hybernation are unknown. 

The sleep of winter and that of 
night are different in those animals 
which are torpid for months. The 
bat, the hedge-hog, the tawrie, the 
marmot, the hamster, the tortoise, 
the toad, snakes, mollusca, spiders, 
bees, flies, bears, badgers, &c. retire 
to their closed holes, and, in various 
degrees, undergo a temporary death 
for four, five, six, and seven months 
of the year. They usually roll them¬ 
selves up, but bats suspend them¬ 
selves in caves. Those who lay up 
provisions use them before they be¬ 
come torpid, and on reviving before 
they venture abroad. Their tempe¬ 
rature lowers; their respiration is 
less frequent and at intervals, the 
circulation is reduced; they lo3e their 
feeling, the digestive organs are in¬ 
active, and they suffer loss of weight. 
The confined air in which they shut 
themselves, added to the cold, is a 
cause of their torpidity. Facts lead 
to the belief that some birds hyber- 
nate. 

Two raindeer drag a sledge 50 or 
60 miles a day. The traveller is tied 
in it, and poises it as necessary. 

Fallow deer fight in parties for 
their pasture, often for successive 
days. The males for the females 
till one is master. 

In mountain flocks of sheep, a ram 
or wedder takes the lead, and will 
kill a dog or resist a bull; and at 
times the whole draw up in battle 
array, and fight without retreat. 

One-eighth of the sheep in Great 
Britain perish every year of various 
diseases. There are supposed to be 
thirty millions. 

Herds of cattle, when attacked by 
a wolf, place the calves in the centre 
of a circle, and resist in form; or the 
bull advances and drives away the 
enemy. 


The horns of the Abyssinian ox 
are nearly four feet long, and seven 
inches diameter at their base. 

The Abyssinian buffalo is double 
the size of our oxen; and two draw 
as much as four horses there, in 
Egypt, and Persia. 

Childers ran four miles in 6 mi¬ 
nutes, 48 seconds, or at the rate of 
35£ miles an hour, carrying 9 stone 
2 lbs. 

A horse frequently sleeps while 
standing. 

Spanish asses are often 15 hands 
high. 

The mule is the produce of the 
male, ass and mare, and the hinny of 
the she ass and horse. The mule is 
larger, more like the mare, and the 
hinny more like the she ass. Neither 
propagate with one another. 

The ursine seals live in communi¬ 
ties, every male having ten or twelve 
females, protecting his own family, 
and preserving social intercourse, 
with great interest and sagacity. 

The dam of the northern foxes will 
follow those who kill her young for 
60 or 70 miles, and howl round them 
by night and day, till she has in some 
way avenged herself. 

The dog, the fox, wolf, and jackal 
intermingle their breeds. Jackals 
hunt in packs with much noise, and 
hence drive prey into the haunts of 
lions, &c. 

Marmots make spacious and con¬ 
venient habitations of several cham¬ 
bers, some of them several feet in 
diameter. 

The spines of the porcupine are 
from nine to fifteen inches, and per¬ 
fect hard quills, which the animal 
can raise at pleasure, but not dart as 
pretended. They roam by night in 
quest of roots and vegetables, and 
are inoffensive, their spines protect¬ 
ing them from all attacks. 

The sloth crawls on its belly, and 
does not advance above 100 yards in 
a day. It is two days in climbing 
and descending a tree. 

The hippopotamus lives and walks 
in water for security, occasionally 
thrusting up its nostrils or head. In 
the night it feeds on sugar-canes, 

, rice, maize, corn, &c. They weigh 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 51 


2£ tons; but are inoffensive unless 
attacked, or in the pairing season. 

Dromedaries have been tried in 
the West Indies, but without success. 

The herds of lamas, and those of 
most animals, have sentinels to give 
warning of the approach of danger. 

Male deer only have horns, which, 
after their sixth year, they shed an¬ 
nually ; they weigh from twenty to 
twentv-five pounds. The park deer 
are called fallow deer. The great red 
deer are less common. They have a 
leader, and, if necessary, fight in con¬ 
cert. The females expose them¬ 
selves to save their young. 

Size of Mammalia. 

Man—4 to 5 feet in Lapland and 
Labrador; 51 to 6§ feet in Europe 
and Asia; 5 to 5f in Africa and 
America; and 6 to 8 feet in Pata- 


gonia. 

Ourang Outang 

41 to 51 feet 

Pigmy apes 

2 feet 

Four-fingered 

1$—tail 2 feet 

Striated monkey 

5 inches 

Vaulting monkey 
Malbrook 

13 inches 
11 feet 

The Barbary ape 
The sphynx 
Dog-faced baboon 

31 feet 

3 or 4 feet 

5 feet 

The preacher 

31 feet 

The lemur 

1 foot 

Vampire 

6 to 12 inches 

Common bat 

4 or 5 inches 

Spectrum bat 

7 inches 

Hedgehog 

10 inches 

The Shrew 

21 inches 

Mole 

6 inches 

Badger 

2| feet 

Glutton 

21 feet 

Ratel 

2 feet 

Racoon 

2 feet 

Ichneumon 

15 inches 

Weasel 

71 inches 

Ferret 

14 inches 

Martin 

18 inches 

Ermine 

10 inches 

Sable 

11 inches 

Polecat 

17 inches 

Zurillo 

17 inches 

Otter 

3£ feet 

Lion 

6 to 8 and 9 feet 

Lioness 

5 to 6 and 7 feet 

Tails 3 feet, height 3 to 5 

Tiger 

8 to 9 feet 

Tail 4 feet, height 4 feet 

Wild cats 

2 to 5 feet 

Lynx 

4 feet 

Civet 

2 feet 


Hyena 
Fennec 
Wolf 
Fox 
Jackal 
Opossum 
Wombat 
Kangaroo 
Flying squirrel 
Ordinary squirrel 
Jerboa 
Dormouse 
Marmot 
The porcupine 
The ant-eater 

Great ant-eater 
The pangolin 
The armadillo and tail 
The elephant 


The tapir 
The rhinoceros 


3 feet 
10 inches 

2£ to 3 feet 
1£ to 2 feet 
*2£ feet 
15 to 18 inches 
2 feet 
3 to 4 feet 
6 inches 
8 inches 
7 to 8 inches 
6 inches 
10 inches 
2| feet 
12 inches 
Spines 4 feet 

4 feet 
6 or 8 feet 

5 feet 
10 or 11 feet 

8 to 10 feet high 

6 feet 
12 feet 

6 or 7 feet high 
The hippopotamus 12 to 20 feet 
The dromedary 6 or 7 feet 

9 feet high to top of head 
The Lama 6 feet 

The musk deer 3£ feet 

The stag 4 to 5 feet 

Roebuck 3f feet 

Raindeer 4 to 5 feet 

Giraffe 15 or 16 feet high 

The chamois 3 feet 

The antelope 3| feet 

The pigmy antelope 10 inches 
The bottle-nosed seal 11 to 18 feet 
Ursine seal 6 to 9 feet 

The maned seal 10 to 14 feet 

The common seal 4 to 6 feet 

The walrus or morse 15 to 18 feet 
Manati 20 to 28 feet 

The Siren 5-feet 

Mamiferous animals are divided 
into ungucuiated with nails, ungucu- 
Iated with hoofs, and nectopode or 
Web-footed. The first order is man, 
or homo—the first family of the 
second order is the simia or monkey 
tribe, in 9 genera, and many species. 
These live in colonies, and distinct 
species in the same forest without 
mutual annoyance, and in the same 
trees with parrots. They mimick 
man in every thing. The ourang- 
outang has no tail, and full grown, 
are 5 or 6 feet high. Their arms are 
long, and they use them as legs and 
hands. They carry clubs for offence, 
move in herds, and reside in huts 
made of leaves. Two or three which 
have been brought to Europe were 






52 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


docile, sensible, imitative, and very 
affectionate. In Africa they perform 
much labour, and are very useful. 
The pigmy without a tail is but 2 
feet high, but very ingenious, active, 
and mischievous. The mona mon¬ 
key is a great favourite in India, and 
they are fed and encouraged in some 
laces. At Amanadab the Gentoos 
ave three hospitals for them, and 
at Dherboy they are more numerous 
than men, and must be fed or do 
mischief. 

It is the magot or Barbary ape 
which is usually made to perform 
feats in Europe. The sphinx-baboon 
is 3 or 4 feet high. In Borneo they 
pillage houses, and move in large 
and very mischievous troops. The 
ursine baboon resides in the high 
lands, near the Cape of Good Hope, 
and is very mischievous, and often 
dangerous to single travellers, carry¬ 
ing clubs and throwing stones with 
great dexterity. The preacher mon¬ 
key or Beelzebub, fills the woods 
with noise, travelling on the tops of 
the trees, and one haranguing the 
rest, displaying in every thing per¬ 
fect sagacity. 

The lemur family in 5 genera, are 
like the monkey, except in the head, 
which more resembles the fox, and 
they are less imitative, though in 
trees as active as monkeys. 

Bats have two pectoral teats and 
the thumb separated from the fingers. 
They fly, but they have neither fea¬ 
thers nor beak, they are covered with 
hair and have teeth. They breed 
living young and suckle with teats. 
Their wings are the drapery of their 
bodies except when they stretch it 
to fly. They fly in the dark, and 
avoid objects not by seeing, but by 
some sense. 

The Hamster rat is of the largest 
species, very bold, fierce, and destruc¬ 
tive. They construct very curious 
dwellings and are dormant in winter, 
but store up provisions. They are 
without fear and fight till overcome; 
and so numerous as to create scarci¬ 
ties of grain. The meadow mouse 
has similar habits, but it is timid, 
though destructive of corn crops. 

The Lemming varies in size from 
the rat to the mouse, and is celebra¬ 
ted for its numbers, and their straight 
line of emigration in tens of thou¬ 


sands, never turning aside, and de¬ 
stroying as they advance, but en¬ 
camping at times, and acting with 
method. 

Mice are easily tamed and are 
very amusing, being fond of musick, 
and very clean, elegant, and harm¬ 
less. They shun the odour of elder. 

Brown rats were unknown in Eng¬ 
land till 1730, but they now exceed 
native black rats in numbers. Their 
numbers drove the Dutch from the 
isle of France. They are often 
tamed and have been taught to play 
tricks. 

Guinea pigs or cavies are the most 
prolific!*. of animals, but very harm¬ 
less and amusing, also very clean, 
feeding on herbs, parsley, &c. 

Hares are universal animals, but 
of various sizes, from 7 to 12 lbs. In 
the arctick circle they are white in 
winter. Their stratagems to escape 
danger are numerous and ingenious, 
but besides man, the enemy of every 
thing living; they are the prey of 
dogs, cats, weasles, eagles, &c. 

Rabbits do not burrow in hot cli¬ 
mates. They have sentinels to give 
warning of danger, chiefly femdes, 
who enter the holes last. The Tar¬ 
tarian hare is not larger than a rat, 
and lives in deep burrows. 

The great ant-eater catches ants 
by stretching out its tongue and ly¬ 
ing still, ana on the ants rising on 
it he draws in his tongue. But it 
often breaks into the hills and pene¬ 
trates them with his tongue till sa 
tisfied. They have been tamed. 

Mole-hills are curiously formed 
by an outer arch impervious to 
rain, and an internal platform with 
drains, and covered ways on which 
the pair and their young reside. 
They live on worms and roots, and 
bury themselves in any soil in a few 
minutes. 

Badgers form houses like moles, 
under ground, and in rocks, and 
though a large animal 2 or 3 feet 
long, it is perfectly ipoflensive, and 
easily domesticated. The glutton 
is the size of the badger, and very 
fierce and voracious, eating from 6 
to 13 lbs. of flesh per day. The ra¬ 
coon, of the same genus, is well 
known in Jamaica, &c. where in 
troops, it devours the maize and 
fruits, and displays great ingenuity 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 53 


in catching shell fish. The ichneu¬ 
mon, in Egypt, performs the office 
of the European cat as a destroyer 
of rats and reptiles, and devourer of 
eggs. It is like the cat, but legs 
snorter. The weasel has similar 
propensities in northern climates. 
The ferret is the length of a cat with 
the habits of the weasel. The mar¬ 
tin is an enemy of cats. The er¬ 
mine or stoat, and the sable are like 
weasels, but longer, and their skins 
fetch high prices. The pole-cat is 
larger than the male house cat, and 
very destructive to poultry, pigeons, 
rabbits, &c. The genus mephitus, 
has glands near the anus, which 
secrets a fetid acrid liquor which 
they squirt on their enemies with 
unerring destruction to clothes and 
skin, and so offensive as to be dis¬ 
tinguished for a mile or two around. 

Animals which live on vegetables 
have no gall bladder. It is the 
same with the pigeon, parrot, and 
ostrich, and with mollusca. 

In some niminantia the intestinal 
canal is 27 times the length of the 
animal, and in rodentia 15 times : 
in hogs 13 times: in the horse the 
colon is 24 feet, but in the dog only 
6 or 8 inches. In the turtle the in¬ 
testinal canal is 5 times the length 
of the body. 

The hoofs of animals are similar 
to the nails of man, and grow from 
the roots. Hair and feathers are 
analogous to the human hair. 

Horns of animals are similar, in 
general, to nails and hoofs; in 
cows, sheep, &c. they are formed 
of concentrick layers in fibres, like 
a collection of hairs agglutinated 
together. In deer they are bones 
attached, but in the giraffe part of 
the skull. 

The guinea pig has 10 teats, the 
rat 12,' and the hare 10. In a 
laying hen, the ovary contains a 

g reat number of yellow round bo- 
ies, each in its own membrane or 
calyx, which when exuded is re¬ 
ceived into an extension of the 
membrane, forming a bunch, of 
which the outer are the largest. 
These are the yolks of future eggs, 
to be provided with whites and 
shells. 

The procreative powers of animals 
are so various that Linnaeus had a 
design to extend his sexual system 


to them. Leeches and earth-worms 

are hermaphrodite, as well as snails 
and slugs. 

The brain of fish is small and does 
not fill the skull. They have no 
tympanum, and no external ear. 
They have neither windpipe nor 
larynx, but breathe by gills. Their 
nose is not connected with respira¬ 
tion, and they have no urinary 
bladder. 

In the ovula of carp fish, called 
the roe, nearly 150000 germs of eggs 
have been counted, and in that of 
the sturgeon, weighing 160 pounds, 
nearly 1500000. 

The antennee, or double, or quad¬ 
ruple horns of insects are so curi¬ 
ously shaped that 160 different forms 
have been noted. They are an or¬ 
gan of power and discrimination, 
like the arms of a man, or the trunk 
of an elephant, and have been sup¬ 
posed to be the residence of a pecu¬ 
liar or sixth sense. 

The bones of birds are hollow, and 
filled with air instead of marrow. 

Crustacea have teeth within the 
stomach. 

In serpents and fish both jaws are 
moveable. 

In animals that have no circulat¬ 
ing system, the air is respired by air 
tubes running below the skin, called 
tracheae, as in insects and mollusca; 
or it passes through the integu¬ 
ments to every part of the body, as 
in worms and zoophytes. 

The lungs of birds are small, and 
of a flattened form, and much dis¬ 
persed ; but they respire through the 
bones and in cavities of the muscles. 

All hair is hollow and cylindrical. 
Young birds are covered with it, and 
feathers are a variety proceed from a 
bulbous root in the skin. 

In the larva of insects there is an 
air tube on each side, with branches 
and several apertures. 

The neighing of ahorse is effected 
by a membrane which is attached 
to a cartilage, and runs along the 
margins of the glottis. The bray¬ 
ing of an ass is produced by a simi¬ 
lar membrane, and two large sacs 
which open into the* larynx. It is 
the same with the mule. In apes, 
the bone connected is concave, and 
hence their noises. 





54 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


The liquid poison of vipers and 
other animals is of a yellow colour. 
It is secreted in two small vessels, 
and communicates by a tube with 
the crooked fangs of the viper. It 
has no taste, but applied to the 
tongue produces numbness. A 
brownish yellow substance, like gum 
arabick, remains after evaporation. 
Taken into the stomach it kills 
small animals immediately. The 
poison of the bee is similar in ap¬ 
pearance. It does not yield to the 
ordinary tests of analysis. 

The gills of fishes are composed 
of four plates on each side, and com¬ 
municating with the throat by a sin¬ 
gle opening for each gill. They re¬ 
ceive the water by these holes, and 
discharge it by a different opening, 
after appropriating the air. The gills 
too have a moveable cover. 

The gills of the cancer are near 
the legs; and in snails there is a 
cavity in the neck, which can be 
opened by the animal at pleasure, 
and which communicates with pul¬ 
monary vessels. 

The rete mucosum , the coloured 
layer which hes between the cuticle 
and the skin, is one-sixteenth of an 
inch thick in whales, and is of the 
consistence of the grease rubbed 
between the nave and the axle of 
wheels. The rete mucosum gives 
colour to all animals, and Cuvier 
considers shelly coverings as analo¬ 
gous to it. 

In many animals torpid in the 
winter, the fat in the cellular mem¬ 
brane is absorbed as nourishment. 
In some, as whales, hogs, seals, &c. 
it is nearly fluid. In some, the inte¬ 
guments have muscles ; as laughing 
in man, the power of coiling in the 
hedgehog, of moving feathers in pea¬ 
cocks, turkeys, &c. 

Hairs are a sort of vegetation on 
animals. Their trunks are round, 
triangular, or square. It may be 
bleached on grass, like flax, and dyed 
of any colour. It is made to curl 
by boiling and baking. 1152 grains 
yield 90 of carbonate of ammo¬ 
nia, 179 water, 288 gas, and 324 
coal. It contains silex, sulphur, oil, 
iron, manganese, and lime. It mea¬ 
sures in man, the forty-eighth of an 
inch. 


bodies arises from the deposit of 
phosphate and carbonate of lime on 
the part. 

Horn is distinguished from bone 
by its bending, and softening by 
heat and water. They consist of 
albumen, some gelatine and phos¬ 
phate of lime. 

Ambergris is an internal produc¬ 
tion of deceased spermaceti whales. 

Spermaceti is produced from the 
head of the cachelot, and ambergris 
is the excrement of its intestines. 

The Bezoar stone sought as a 
charm for the cure of many diseases, 
is produced in the stomach of goats, 
antelopes, and sometimes camels. 
Its nucleus appears to be some indi¬ 
gestible hard seed or stone, and its 
specific gravity is from If to 2£. 

Fish and birds can see through the 
nictitating membrane, which they 
draw over their eyes to screen them 
from the sun. 

The peculiar secretions of animals 
are as under :— 

Castor , near the end of the rectum 
in the beaver. 

Civet , in the same part of the civet 
cat. 

Musk, near the navel of the male 
musk. 

Foetid emanations in many when 
attacked. 

In whales, spermaceti and amber¬ 
gris. 

Oil , by birds, to lubricate their 
feathers, taken from the rump. 

Poison, by serpents. 

Silk, by the larvae of the silkworm; 
and the webs of spiders. 

The acrid matter that passes 
through the stings of wasps and 
bees. 

The inkyjluid of the cuttle-fish, in 
a bag near the anus. 

Silky matter produced by the sea 
muscle, &c. 

Leach divides insects in 15 orders: 

Subclass I. AMETABOLIA. 


Insects undergoing no metamor¬ 
phoses. 

Order I. Thysanura. Tail armed 
The ossification of soft parts of l with setae. 





Order II. Anoplura. Tail without 

setae. 

Subclass II. METABOLIA. 
Insects undergoing metamorpho- 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


55 


ses. 


Cohors II. Gnathostoma. Mouth 

with maxillae and lip. 

Order XII. 'Trichopttra . Wings 
four, membranaceous, with peteri- 
gostea, and hairy. 


Century I. Elylhroptcra. Insects 
with elytra. 

Cohors I. Odontostoma. Mouth 
with mandibles. 

Metamorphoses incomplete. 

Order III. Coleoptera. Wings 
transversely folded; elytra crusta- 
ceous, covering the wings, with the 
suture straight. 

Metamorphoses nearly coarctate. 

Order IV. Strepsiptera. Wings 
longitudinally folded ; elytra coria¬ 
ceous, not covering the wings. 

Metamorphoses semi-complete. 

Order V. Dermaptera. Wings 
longitudinally and transversely fold¬ 
ed; elytra somewhat crustaceous, 
abbreviated, with the suture straight. 

Order YI. Orthoptera, Wings 
longitudinally folded; the internal 
margin of one elytron covering the 
same part of the other; elytra coria¬ 
ceous. 

Order VII. Dictuoptera. Wings 
longitudinally folded twice or more; 
elytra coriaceous, nervous, one de¬ 
cussating the other obliquely. 

Cohors II. Siphonostoma. Mouth 
with an articulated rostrum. 

Order VIII. Hemiptcra. Elytra 
somewhat crustaceous, or coriace¬ 
ous ; towards the apex generally 
membranaceous, horizontal, one de¬ 
cussating the other obliquely. Met¬ 
amorphoses half complete. 

Order IX. Omoptera. Elytra en¬ 
tirely coriaceous, or membranaceous, 
and meeting obliquely, with a straight 
suture. Metamorphoses semi-com¬ 
plete, or incomplete. 

Century II. Medamoptera. In¬ 
sects without wings or elytra. 

Order X. Aptera. Mouth with a 
tubular sucking rostrum. Metamor¬ 
phoses incomplete. 

Century III. Gymnoptcra. Insects 
with wings, but no elytra. 

Cohors I. Glossostoma. Mouth 
with a spiral tongue. 

Order XI. Lepidoptera. Wings 
four, membranaceous, with peterigos- 
tea, covered with meal-like stales. 


Cohors III. Odontostoma. Mouth 
with mandibles, maxillae, and lip. 

Order XIII. Ncuroptera. Four 
highly reticulated wings, generally 
equal in size; anus of the female 
without a sting, or compound borer. 

Order XIV. Hymenoptera. Four 
venose wings, hinder ones smallest; 
anus of the female with a sting, or 
with a compound borer or oviduct. 

Cohors IV. Siphonostoma. Mouth 
tubular, formed for sucking. 

Order XV. Diptera. Wings, and 
halteres or balancers two. 

Few insects live more than a year 
in their perfect state, but often 
much longer in their larva state. 
Their first state is the egg, then the 
caterpillar, then the chrysalis, or 
pupa, and finally the perfect and pro- 
creative form. But in these changes 
there are infinite degrees and varieties 
of transition, all which constitute the 
pleasing and very instructive study of 
entomology. 

Insects appear as eggs hatched in 
a caterpillar or larva, which changes 
into a motionless chrysalis or nym- 
pha, the covering of which bursting, 
a butterfly, evolves with wings, long 
jointed legs, and two antennae. Some 
have jawsj others no jaws; some 
have no wings, and others have four 
wings variously marked, and one 
order but two wings. 

Insects have, lympli instead of 
blood, and no bones, but hard cover¬ 
ings to which the muscles are attach¬ 
ed. They have no vertebra. They 
do not breathe through the mouth or 
nostrils, but have air vessels along 
their sides, called spiracula, and con¬ 
nected with other vessels called bron¬ 
chia:. They have the organs of sense, 
and make all the discriminations 
which accord with their physical 
powers and wants. They are ovipa¬ 
rous, but scorpions and aphides are 
viviparous. All the winged insects 
exist as larvae, and undergo meta¬ 
morphoses previous to their perfect 
or propagating state. The male is 
always smaller and more coloured 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


56 _ 

than the female, which alone have 
stings, but males have horns. 

Insects breathe through holes or 
pores on each side of every segment 
of the abdomen, called spiracula. 

The antennae are important organs 
of insects, equal to the hands of man. 
By them the bee works in constant 
darkness. 

There are 292 species of the bee or 
apis genus, and 111 in England: 
among solitary bees the following 
deserves notice: 

The rose-cutter separates circular 
pieces from leaves with precision, and 
digging a hole 6 or 8 inches deep in 
the ground, the bee rolls up the leaf 
and depositing it in the hole, lodges 
and secures an egg in it with food for 
larvae when hatched, and often seve¬ 
ral, but all separated, and very per¬ 
fect ; and the bee then resides m the 
upper part to protect her brood. 

The upholsterer makes a hole en¬ 
larged at the bottom, and lines the 
whole with red poppy leaves, lavs her 
eggs, supplies them with food, &c. 
separately, then turns down the lin¬ 
ing to cover them, and closing the 
hme leaves them to mature. 

The uood-piercer makes a perpen¬ 
dicular hole with vast labour in a 
decaying tree in the sun-shine, a foot 
deep. Then deposits her eggs and 
food, and separates each by a dwarf 
wall made of saw-dust and gluten, 
each higher than the other, and the 
last closing the hole; and she then 
makes another liole horizontally, to 
enable them to escape as they suc¬ 
cessively mature. 

The mason-bee constructs a nest 
on the side of a sunny wall—makes 
up sand pellets with gluten, and by 
persevering industry fixes and finish¬ 
es a cell in which it lays an egg and 
provisions. It then forms others be¬ 
side it and covers in the whole, the 
structure being as firm as the stone. 

Wasps and humble-bees make 
cavities in banks. They line them 
with wax, and make innumerable 
cells for their eggs in perfect commu- 
nitieSj working together and forming 
lines in the removal of whatever in¬ 
commodes them. 

The honey-bee is well known and 
deservedly respected for the use 


which man makes of their industry; 

and too often by the wholesale mur¬ 
der of the ingenious creatures whom 
he robs. But this most cruel prac¬ 
tice is now even from selfish motives 
abated. The queen is the mother of 
the whole hive, and her eggs become 
males, females and workers or neu¬ 
ters, which last make the combs and 
cells, and collect the honey. The 
queen produces some thousands of 
workers, and then males, which the 
workers kill at the end of the sum¬ 
mer. The workers attend the queen 
with anxious respect. If she die, 
they raise a new one by various arts 
from a working worm. Two queens 
cannot live in the same hive, and one 
is destroyed. 

They have four wings and six legs. 
The body is covered with hair and 
each hair is like a plant in miniature. 
The proboscis is employed in collect¬ 
ing honey by licking it from the 
flower and conveying it to the sto¬ 
mach, whence it is disgorged into the 
cells. The wax is formed from the 
honey. The females and workers 
have a sting, but the males or drones 
none. It is double and provided with 
barbs, which the animal depresses 
and draws out the sting unless sud¬ 
denly driven away. The sting emits 
a poison into the wound. 

In proportionate size the queen bee 
is 8J, the male 7, and the workers 6. 
A queen will lay 200 eggs daily for 
50 or 60 days, and tne eggs are 
hatened in three days. The work¬ 
ers are 5 days in the worm state, 
and in 20 days they become bees. 
The males are 6 or 7 days in the 
worm state, and 24 days m becom¬ 
ing perfect bees. A queen is 5 days 
in the worm state, and in 16 days is 
perfect. When eggs are converted 
into queens the old queen destroys 
them, or if there are tw r o young 
queens they fight till one has killed 
the other. One author asserts that 
a single queen has produced 100000 
bees m a season. Everything de¬ 
pends on the workers ; they collect 
the honey, make wax, and build the 
combs, they supply the worms with 
food, and protect the entrance of the 
hive; separate business being per¬ 
formed by classes. 

There are about 9000 cells in a 
comb of a foot square; their first 
purpose is as nurseries for the young, 





THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


57 


and they are then cleaned and filled 
with honey. 5000 bees weigh a 
pound. 20 or 30 pounds of honey 
are generally got from a hive, some¬ 
times 80 or 100 lbs., and even more. 
Formerly it was an inhuman prac¬ 
tice to suffocate and destroy the 
bees, thereby uniting murder with 
robbery; but good managers have, 
for many years past preserved them 
and fed them during the winter, by 
which plan, five hives at U. each, 
have in ten years yielded a profit of 
1280Z. To destroy the swarm for 
the sake of the honey, is like cutting 
down fruit trees for the sake of the 
fruit, independent of the atrocious 
cruelty attending the practice. 

A swarm of bees contains from 
10000 to 20000 in a natural state, and 
from 30 to 40000 in a hive. 

All the experiments on bees prove, 
that love for their queen and her pro¬ 
geny is the sole stimulus to their per¬ 
severing industry. Their joy, grief, 
and other passions are distinguished 
in the tone of their humming, which 
to them are articulate sounds. It is 
the same with other insects, and 
with all animals, with various ex¬ 
tents of vocabulary. 

The hexagonal cells of bees have 
angles of 109° 26' and 70° 32', being 
the least matter and the largest size 
m the space. 

The wasp’s nest is equally wonder¬ 
ful with the bee-hive, and forms a 
regular city, fortified against en¬ 
croachments, and containing 15 or 
16000 cells for young. 

There are 500 species of the pari- 
saical flies called ichneumon. They 
deposit theii eggs in other insects 
or animals, and there the larva are 
hatched and find nourishment. 

A single female house-fly produces 
in one season 20080320!— Haller. 

There are 72 species of aphis from 
a line long to the size of a fly. They 
are the blight of vegetation. They 
are hermaphrodites for the most part, 
and oviparous. Their excretions are 
honey, and they are the food of bees 
and other insects. But they punc¬ 
ture and curl leaves, and destroy 
wherever they harbour. Earwigs 
and birds also destroy them, and ich¬ 
neumon flies make their bodies depo¬ 
sitaries for their eggs. 

Ephemera are a genus of short lived 


insects which live in their perfect 
state some 2 or 3 days, some a night, 
and some species not above an hour. 
As larva and chrysalis, they live for 
two or three years in water. But in 
their final form they propagate and 
die, the female in this short time lay¬ 
ing some hundred eggs on water 
which sink to the bottom. 

The louse lays 60 eggs in 6 days, 
which are hatched in other 6 days. 

The itch is caused by a mite which 
lives in a vesicle of the skin. In 
other cases, the same genus obtains 
a habitation in the body, causing a 
disease called morbus pedicularis. 

Of centipedes or Scolopendra there 
are 19 species, some very large with 
two legs for every division of the 
body, but seldom, if ever, 100. 

There are 60 species of the dragon¬ 
fly, all very ravenous in regard to 
smaller insects. 

The gad-fly deposits its eggs in the 
bodies of horses, cattle, sheep, &c. 

The Peruvian fulgora or lantern-fly 
is above 3 inches long. The head or 
lantern is half its length and of a 
straw colour, and the light splendid. 
There is also a smaller species in 
India. 

There are several hundred species 
of the scarabceus or beetle genus. 
The hercules species is 5 or 6 inches 
long and beautifully marked. 

A thousand species have been enu¬ 
merated of the genus musca or fly. 

In Mexico and South America, fire 
flies are very common, which shine 
by so strong a phosphoric light, that 
a person may read by the light of 
three of them. The largest species 
have a luminous patch under the 
belly, and one on each side of the 
head. Another species has the light 
under its wings. When the fly is 
dead the light continues, and may be 
transferred. 

There are no grounds for the terror 
inspired by ear-wigs. No medical 
case is recorded of mischief from 
them, and oil or brandy would in¬ 
stantly kill, or expel them ; while 
they can in no case penetrate beyond 
the external orifice. 

The speckled caterpillar, which 
produces the magpie moth, lives 
through the winter on currant and 
gooseberry trees. 





58 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


Many spiders, moths, and beetles, 
counterfeit death when in danger, 
and no torture will make them show 
signs of life while the danger con¬ 
tinues. 

Gossamer consists of the fine 
threads of the flying spider, covered 
with dew. 

The order Parasita includes the 
louse species, which are so numerous 
that every species of bird, and it is 
believed every animal, has its own 
particular kind; and the same species 
never was found on two distinct 
species of birds or animals. 

The species of louse which runs on 
the bodies and garments of men is 
not the same as that which inhabits 
the head. 

The monas, a water hydated or 
viscid bubble, is the first germ of ani¬ 
mal secretion, or stomachick absorp¬ 
tion. 

Leuwenhoeck reckoned 17000 di¬ 
visions in the cornea of a butterfly, 
each of which he thought a separate 
crystalline lens. Spiders, &c. are 
equally provided for. 

The flea, grasshopper, and locust, 
jump two hundred times their own 
length, equal to a quarter of a mile 
for a man. 

The insect which eats round holes 
in furniture is the Dermestes domes- 
ticus and the species lardarius eats 
the leather off books and any animal 
substance. 

The termes fatale or white ant, 
builds pyramidical structures 10 or 
12 feet high, divided into a vast va¬ 
riety of apartments, and so strong as 
to permit four men to stand on them. 
The community is well governed, 
they appear in discipline to exceed 
all animals. 

The ant-hills of our fields are full 
of cells and passages curiously 
formed with twigs and weeds ce¬ 
mented by their own gluten. They 
disfigure a field, and do not diminish 
but rather increase its productive¬ 
ness for grazing; and in grazing dis¬ 
tricts they abound, and are seldom 
disturbed. They present a larger 
surface to the air and increase the 
quantity of grass and animal food, 
while they fertilize the soil. 

The nests of ants are managed by 
the neuters, and usually established 
in mole hills, or among the roots of 


trees. There are eighteen species, 
and they are remarkably intelligent, 
ingenious, and industrious. Nests 
often fight like men, and kill vast 
numbers of each other. 

An ant’s nest consists of males and 
females, who have wings; and also 
of neuters. The females enjoy the 
same pre-eminence as among bees; 
but the manners of ants are more 
varied, and system, object, and end, 
mark all their varied reasonings and 
labours. They have long and tena¬ 
cious memories, know each other, 
and distinguish any stranger. They 
carry on systematick wars, and prac¬ 
tise all the arts of attack and de¬ 
fence. Man himself is not more sa¬ 
vage in war: but they are citizen sol¬ 
diers, and not hired and trained for 
butchery and murder. They also 
practise slavery, making slaves of 
those they overcome. They keep 
aphides, as men keep cows, for the 
juices which they yield. Their nest s 
are formed at pleasure, and their cells 
of various forms. In Brazil they are 
almost masters of the country, and 
in Africa not less formidable. The 
termites white ants, or cutters, not 
only destroy furniture, clothes, &c. 
but raise conical buildings nine or ten 
feet high like villages, which it is 
inconvenient to approach. 

There are 6 or 7 generations of 
gnats in a summer, and each lays 
250 eggs. 

Bees, beetles, dragon flies, gnats, 
spiders, &c. have been observed to 
have minute acari or mites on their 
bodies. 

The gall fly forms the gall nuts on 
trees and plants by its eggs and 
young, and the gad-fly does the 
same in the skins of cattle. 

There are 50 species of wood-peck¬ 
ers. The largest native of England 
is the green, 13 inches long, an ene¬ 
my of ant-hills. 

The black ostrich stands 7 feet 
high. Their speed is that of the 
horse, and they can carry a man. 
The cassowary is as large but has a 
shorter neck. Both of them are 
African, and they feed on vegetables. 

In Norway, eagles destroy oxen by 
the following contrivance : they dive 
into the sea and then roll themselves 
iri the sand and afterwards, by flap¬ 
ping their wings and shaking their 






THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


59 


fea thers into the eyes of an ox, they 

blind it and overcome it. 

The American pelicans carry food 
to anv other who is ill or disabled. 
And the pelican carbo or cormorant 
, is used on the Chinese coast for fish¬ 
ing, and formerly was so used in 
England. Gannets abound in the 
western islands, and 20,000 are taken 
annually at St. Kilda. 

There are 32 species of the falco 
genus, including most birds of prey, 
as eagles, kites, hawks, falcons, &c. 
They are very active, keen-sighted, 
strong, and long-lived. They live 
on young animals, fish, seals and 
other birds. It is a libel on human 
nature to state that these savage 
birds used formerly to be tamed and 
used for the genteel pastime of fal¬ 
conry. 

There are 4 species of swallows, or 
hyrundo genus; the chimney swal¬ 
low ( rustica ), the house martin ( ur- 
bica), the sand martin ( riparia ), and 
the swift ( apus ), and they arrive in 
spring in this order. 

The bird of Paradise is a native of 
North Guinea, near the Equator. 
They migrate to Aroo in flights, but 
will not live in the cruelty of confine¬ 
ment. 

There are 50 species of owls, a 
bird of night, and very solemn in its 
appearance, having a ruff which re¬ 
sembles the full wigs now worn only 
by judges. 

The birds which pass but part of 
the year in Britain, are the cuckoo, 
grouse, wryneck, stare, hoopoe, 
thrushes, ring-dove, chatterer, turtle¬ 
dove, grosbeaks, buntings, finches, 
larks, fly-catchers, wagtails, warb¬ 
lers, nightingales, black-caps, wil¬ 
low-wrens, white-ears, white throats, 
goat-suckers,herons, curlews, snipes, 
rails, wild-ducks, and other water 
fowl. 

Carrier pigeons are a larger species 
than the common pigeon. They 
have a wattle extending over half the 
bill, and hanging down on both 
sides as a piece of white flesh, and 
this is supposed to be connected with 
the properties as a carrier. The eyes 
are also surrounded by a similar 
substance, and importance is attach¬ 
ed to its width. Noah seems to have 
employed one, and they were used 
by the ancients during sieges. The 


Turks and all ea tern nations em¬ 
ploy them, and in Turkey there 
are stations from which they pass 
and fresh birds are forwarded. The 
Turks train them to different dis¬ 
tances progressively, and their flight 
is only certain while they have eggs 
or unfledged young. They rise very 
high before they start, and travel 
from 25 to 40 miles an hour. Besides 
this singular return of pigeons, the 
swallow, and the crow, ana cats and 
dogs, have the same occult faculty. 

Sparrows generally have 3 broods 
in a year. 

The song of birds is a movement in 
succession, equal to a bar of 4 adagio 
crotchets, performed in 4 seconds. 

Of singing birds, the nightingale 
unites the highest perfection of qua¬ 
lities, the linnet next, then the tit¬ 
lark, the sky-lark, and the wood-lark, 
the goldfinch and the robin excel in. 
lively notes. 

Birds have two larynxes at each 
extremity of the wind-pipe. That 
next the luhgs is the organ of singing. 
In some there are windings in the 
windpipe. Frogs have in their larynx 
membraneous bags. 

In July most singing birds become 
silent. Those which sing through the 
winter are chiefly yomig birds. 

In the arrivals of migrating birds, 
the males arrive several days before 
the females. 

Birds of passage which pass to very 
distant climes and regions, return 
to the same localities, and often oc¬ 
cupy the same nests, though absent 
for many months. The swift departs 
before the 1st of September, chimney 
and house swallows early in October, 
and the sand-martin about the mid¬ 
dle: the cuckoo in spring precedes 
the arrival of the sand-martin. The 
crake, the quail, and the goat-sucker 
pass the summer in our latitude, but 
the red-wing, the field fare, the wood¬ 
cock, the snow-bunting, the silk-tail, 
the hoopoe, pass the winter with us: 
it is believed that the swallows, &c. 
which visit Europe in the summer, 
pass the winter in Africa, and the 
birds which pass the winter in this 
climate, pass the summer in Lap- 
land, Norway, and Iceland.—Their 
migration can, of course, only be the 
result of intelligence and habit, in 
which the older birds direct the 




60 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


young ones from generation to gen¬ 
eration. Their flights to and fro are 
often witnessed in the Mediterranean, 
but the greatest curiosity of their 
economy is <hat of returning to the 
same localities. Some writers pre¬ 
tend that swallows do not migrate 
because they find a few at the bottom 
of ponds, which have been drowned 
in skimming them to catch flies. 

The cuckoo begins to sing, and 
swallows appear in different parts of 
Great Britain between the 20th of 
April and the 10th of May. 

Five species of birds of passage 
enter Spain annually from Africa, 
and are seen to pass and repass 
in flocks at certain changes of the 
season. 

I have found by experience, that 
migrating birds go in a direct line 
from north to south, and never take 
their course from east to west, or 
west to east. Hasselquist. 

The magpie, the wren, and the 
long-tailed titmouse, among British 
birds build domed nests. 

The voluntary act of emptying 
the stomach is possessed by some 
birds, as the pigeon, who has an 
organ for secreting milk in its sto¬ 
mach, as Mr. Hunter observed : and 
it softens the food for its young by 
previously swallowing it; and after¬ 
wards putting its bill into theirs, re¬ 
turns it into their mouths. The 
pelicans use a throat bag, for the 
purpose of bringing the fish which 
they catch in the sea to the shore, 
ana then eject them and eat them at 
their leisure. I am well informed of 
a bitch, who, having puppies in a 
stable at a distance from the house, 
swallowed the flesh meat which was 
given her, in large pieces, and going 
immediately to her whelps, brought 
it up out of her stomach, and laid it 
down before them. Darwin. 

When seamen are thrown upon 
any of the unknown coasts of Ame¬ 
rica, they never venture upon the 
fruit of any tree, how tempting so¬ 
ever it may appear, unless they ob¬ 
serve that it is marked with the 
pecking of birds, but fall on without 
any fear where they have been be¬ 
fore them. 

Small birds baffle hawks by flying 
round and above them in great num¬ 
bers. 


Quills are for the most part pluck¬ 

ed with great cruelty from living 
geese, and all persons from conven¬ 
ience, economy, and feeling, ought to 
prefer metallicfc pens. 

Chickens are hatched by the heat 
of ovens by the natives of Berme, a 
village in Egypt. They hire them¬ 
selves over Egypt for the purpose, 
and undertake to deliver fds as 
many chickens as eggs. The ovens 
contain from 40 to 80,000 eggs, and 
there are 400 of them in different 
parts. Each brood occupies 21 days, 
and they work their ovens for 6 
months, producing altogether 100 
millions of chickens in 6 months. 

Wild ducks are estimated to fly 90 
miles an hour, swallows fly rather 
faster, and the swift is said to fly 
above 200 miles in an hour. 

Birds which nestle in holes, as 
wood-peckers, wry-necks, robins, 
swallows, &c. have eggs of a shin¬ 
ing white. Pale green or pale blue 
characterizes the eggs of the starl¬ 
ing, fly-catchers, hedge sparrows, 
&c. A green colour in those who lay 
loosely among grass. The nuthatch 
titmouse and chimney-swallow are 
party-coloured with a white ground. 
Others not white, are larks and sing¬ 
ing birds. 

Modern classification does not 
rank cetacious animals as fishes, 
though they live in the sea. They 
suckle their young, and, therefore, 
are classed with man, &c. among 
mammalia. Their hands are large, 
and they have little or no neck. Their 
eyes are very small and backward. 
The tail is horizontal, and they have 
swimming paws, similar totheforc 
feet of seals. A single stroke with 
the tail of a whale will cut a boat in 
two ; and they move in the sea above 
a mile in a minute. The stomach 
consists of four or five successive 
cavities. They live chiefly on other 
species of fish. The aorta of whales 
is thirteen inches in diameter. The 
blow-holes are nostrils at the top of 
the head to inspire air; and the blow¬ 
holes are so contrived as to enable it, 
at pleasure, to eject the water that 
enters the mouth. A large whale 
can form a jet forty feet high. Their 
structure is as anatomically curious 
and perfect as that of other mamma¬ 
lia, and they merit the respect and 
sympaihy of man. In general they 





THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


61 


are black. Those of Spitzbergen are 
white. The balsenae, or common 
whales, are often sixty feet long and 
thirty round. Instead of teeth they 
have whalebone plates, with hairy 
borders hanging from the upper jaw. 
The females are most affectionate to 
their young; and w r hen assailed and 
wounded by the avaricious monsters 
who frequent these seas, their care 
of their young ones often draws tears 
from every eye-witness who is not 
capable of midnight murder. This 
class includes— 

The common whale and 


Iceland whale GO feet 

Finned whales 50 feet 

Nor-whales 21 feet 

Spermaceti whale 60 feet 

Dolphins 25 feet 

Porpoises 6 feet 

Grainpusses 20 feet 

Beaked whale 24 feet 


The great whale is a very harm¬ 
less animal, and has neither the 
habits nor the conformation of fishes. 
They have no teeth and very narrow 
gullets. Their horizontal tail, and 
the suckling of their young, bring 
them within the class of land ani¬ 
mals. The barbarous practice of 
killing them for gain is akin to the 
traffick in the human species, which, 
till within these few years, disgraced 
commerce. 

The dugongis a grazing sea animal, 
which, at the bottom of the sea, feeds 
on marine plants. It is as large as a 
cow, and is often seen in shallow 
water between the tropicks. 

Sharks are often so large as to 
weigh 3 or 40001bs.; living partly on 
vegetables, but voracious of every 
thing, and the terrour of tropical seas. 

The delphinus, or dolphin genus of 
fishes, consists of the dolphin, por¬ 
poise, grampus, and leucas, or white 
fish. 

The cod, according to Leuenhoeck, 
annually spawns nine millions of 
eggs; the flounder a million; the 
mackerel half a million; the herring 
ten thousand; the carp a quarter of 
a million; the perch more ; and the 
sturgeon six or seven millions. Of 
the viviparous, the blenny brings 
forth two or three hundred. The 
spawn of one genus is mostly de¬ 
voured by others, and not one egg in 
a hundred is supposed to be hatched. 


There are nineteen species of that 
half-human inhabitant of the sea 
called seals. They are even more 
like men than monkeys are, and live 
in social communities, and display 
great sagacity and mutual affection. 
The females are specially interesting 
in their duties to the young; and 
among some species but one male 
and one female cohabit, while in 
others polygamy is practised with 
regular family government. For the 
sake of oil, man is their merciless 
destroyer. The smaller species are 
called sea-calves, and the larger, or 
ursine, sea-horses. They are often 
mistaken for the fabulous creature 
the mermaid. 

That lusus natures the flying fish, 
has very large pectoral fins. When 
pursued by the dorados and other fish 
of prey, it rises into the air on these 
fins, and flies as long as they continue 
wet. 

Many fish are very long-lived. Carp 
and pike have been identified for 
above 200 years. Their respiration 
is repeated every two or three sec¬ 
onds, and their gills are larger than 
the surface of their bodies; in this re¬ 
spect resembling the expanded lungs 
of animals. 

The art of sailing is merely an 
imitation of the nautilus. There are 
thirty species; some so large that 
drinking cups are made of their 
shells. The fish is independent of 
the shell. In sailing it stretches out 
two of its arms, which hold up a 
membrane as a sail; and with two 
other arms and its tail, rows and 
steers. The prodigious number and 
size of those in a fossil state proves 
that they were at one period more 
important than they have been since. 
Man has exerted nis power as the 
universal destroyer. 

The monoculus, or crab genus, has 
fifty species, distinguished into seven 
sections, as they have one or two 
eyes or one or more shells. 

All flat fish are comprised in the 
genus pleuro nutes: species of which 
are the flounder, halibut, plaice, sole, 
turbot, dab, 6oc. They have their 
eyes on the right side. 

A sea-snake was cast ashore in 
Orkney, which was fifty-five feet 
long, and the circumference equal to 
the girth of an Orkney pony. 




62 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


The cod-fish, or gadus, which sup¬ 
plies the Catholicks with such luxu¬ 
rious repasts on their t /as£-days and 
in Lent, abounds in shoals on the 
coasts and banks of Newfoundland, 
Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia. They 
are from 14 to 40 lbs. and larger. 

Mackerel, &c. pass the winter in 
the mud or sand in deep water, and 
emerge in the spring. 

The air-bladder offish enables them 
to rise or sink at pleasure; and this 
power, and that of the fins and tail, 
gives the largest a speed many times 
greater than that of any ship. 

Aristotle divides shells into three 
orders, univalves, of one piece, and 
bivalves, and turbinated; and the 
same arrangement is still preserved, 
except that the order is changed by 
Linnaeus, and the turbinated are 
called multivalves; and lie divides 
them into three genera of multi¬ 
valves, fourteen of bivalves, and 
nineteen of univalves. Latreille has 
since published another arrangement 
in 153 genera, but not more satisfac¬ 
tory. The best work on British 
shells is by Donovan. In univalves, 
in some species, the cavity is divided 
into chambers, with a pipe of com¬ 
munication ; the base is the mouth 
and opposite is the apex. The con¬ 
volutions are called whorls. The 
hinge in bivalves is sometimes fur¬ 
nished with teeth, it is usually joined 
by a strong ligament. They adhere 
to rocks by a thread-like substance, 
called the beard. The forming of 
collections of these natural trifles is 
accompanied by the cruel practice of 

lunging the shell in boiling water to 

ill tne animal; and, in some cases, 
this has not succeeded, for shells put 
away as dry have sometimes been 
found crawling, and after a con¬ 
siderable lapse of time. 

The shell of a sea cockle is the cir¬ 
culating medium of Angola and the 
neighbouring kingdoms. The cockles 
are caught on the shores of the island 
Loanda, held by the Portuguese, 
who, therefore, make the people 
tributary. 

Snails shut in a box with air close 
themselves in their shells, and live in 
a dormant state for months or years 
and revive in water at 72°. 5 

The snail called helix formatio is 
eaten at Rome by the people during 


Lent, being fattened purposely. 
When snails attack fruit, they touch 
no other till that is gone: hence 
gardeners never remove them. Their 
eyes are at the end of each horn. 
Lice are found on their bodies, and 
worms in their intestines. 

A shower of crabs fell with heavy 
rain, in the summer of 1829, in the 
yard of the Poor-House at Reigate, 
and were lively, weighing two ounces. 

The bony scale on the back of 
cuttle fish is used for tooth powder 
and pounce. This fish squirts a 
black fluid like ink. 

The Persian pearl fishery is car¬ 
ried on at the Bahrin Islands, in the 
Persian Gulf. The vessels amount 
to many hundreds, and the pearls 
weigh from ten to fifty grains. 

Oysters differ from muscles in being 
attached where they grow. They 
spawn in May, like drops of candle 
grease in water, which attach and 
grow for three years. On the coast 
of Coromandel they are two feet in 
diameter. 

Two polypes cut asunder, and ioin- 
ed at either end, become one; and one 
species may be turned inside out, and 
live as before. 

Throughout the Australasian seas 
there is scarcely a league without a 
coral reef, rock, or island, raised from 
the bottom of the sea by marine po¬ 
lypi, though the sea itself is fathom¬ 
less. Some are in deep water, others 
with a few rocks above the surface. 
Some in islands, but without vege¬ 
tation, others with a few weeds on 
the higher parts, and some covered 
with large timber, though the sea is 
unfathomable close to the rock. It 
appears that the birds settle as soon 
as the reef rises above the water, and 
their dung, floating wreck, with seed 
and cocoa-nuts, lay the foundation 
of vegetation. Captain Flinders con¬ 
ceives that in due time, the whole of 
that sea will be united in one exten¬ 
sive continent. The whole of the 
eastern coast of New Holland is fill¬ 
ed with corals. Flinders sailed 500 
miles in fourteen days before he could 
disentangle himself. On landing on 
a newly formed one, he found wheat- 
sheafs, mushrooms, stag’s horns, 
cabbage-leaves, and other forms, 
growing under water. These crea¬ 
tions arise from the insects continu- 





THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


ally raising a wall to leeward higher 
and higher, as a shelter from the 
wind and waves. 

There are three celebrated coral 
fisheries in the Mediterranean, but 
corals are procured in many seas. 
The best is procured in submarine 
caverns.- It is enlarged by the in¬ 
sects which generate it, like vegeta¬ 
bles. It is ten years in attaining its 
full height of a foot. There are nine 
shades of red, and several of white 
coral. It grows in depths from.60 to 
600 feet. In growing it preserves an 
exact perpendicular direction. In the 
South Seas the little animal raises 
the bases of islands of this hard ma¬ 
terial, carrying it nearly to the sur¬ 
face of the water, forming at first 
dangerous shoals, which ultimately 
become fertile islands. 

Dracunculi are thin long worms 
which, in very hot countries, breed 
and grow in the muscular parts of 
the bo'dy, to the length of four or five 
yards. 

The order mollusca of vermes, are 
all more or less phosphorescent, a 
power which enables them to illu¬ 
minate deep waters. 

There are forty species of animal 
anemones or actiniae. They are beau¬ 
tiful in structure and wonderful in 
their economy. They are of a cylin¬ 
drical figure, or pear or funnel-shaped, 
but often like a marigold or rose. 
They are found firmly fixed on the 
rocks washed by the sea. They swell 
or contract at pleasure. They de¬ 
vour fish, crabs, &c. as well as flesh. 
They spread their numerous arms, or 
tentacula, and if one seizes any prey, 
the rest unite in securing it, and car¬ 
rying it to the mouth. They are her¬ 
maphrodite, and cast their young 
from their mouth; and they often di¬ 
vide and become two animals; and 
so if cut into several parts, which, if 
torn away, the very shreds become 
perfect actiniae. They cannot live in 
fresh water. They have sensitive 
feelings, shrink in case of danger, 
and enjoy the light, but no eyes have 
been traced. They can detach them¬ 
selves to float in the sea. 

Sponges are believed to consist of 
excitable flesh, full of small mouths, 
by which they absorb and eject 
water. 

The phosphorick light seen in the 


_63 

ocean is caused by innumerable quan¬ 
tities of phosphorick insects, and is 
sometimes so intense as to make the 
waves appear like red-hot balls. 

There are two classes of animal¬ 
cules, seventeen genera; and 378 spe¬ 
cies. The first class, of ten genera, 
consists of worms in various forms. 
The second are worm-like, with ad¬ 
ditions ; and most of them are visi¬ 
ble only with the microscope. 

They are produced by mixture of 
various substances in fluids; and by 
some supposed to be spontaneous, 
while others have referred their ori¬ 
gin to various causes. 

Hempseed, rice, lentils, peas, pep¬ 
per, beet-root, blighted corn, &c. all 
yield various kinds on being mace¬ 
rated in water; and however much 
boiled, the smaller kinds appear. 
Vinegar, too, produces eels, and all 
animal substances in putrescence 
display them. There are none in fresh 
rain water or pure spring water. Sea 
water, when used for the solution, 
produces them in swarms. 

The itch, according to Willan, is 
caused by an insect, white, with eight 
reddish legs, to the four hind ones of 
which is appended a bristle. It may 
be distinguished with the microscope 
in the vesicles in the joints, which 
accompany the disorder. On the 
same authority we learn that most 
of the diseases of the skin are occa¬ 
sioned by other insects. 

Lewenhoeck saw hundreds of ani¬ 
malcules in the space of a grain of 
sand, and he says ten thousand, but 
it is now suspected that he saw the 
ultimate motions of the atoms of gas 
and not organized beings. A drop of 
water contains hundreas, all in ex¬ 
treme activity, swimming or crawl¬ 
ing with freedom and purpose. They 
appear to subsist on the atoms of the 
infusion, and some prey on others. 
Some have the form of flying dra¬ 
gons with all their parts, others are 
like polype, some like worms, others 
with many legs like insects, while 
others have machinery of wheels 
which turn, create vortexes, and ap¬ 
parently enable them to collect food. 
Some are like plants, with branches 
each terminated with an animalcule, 
and the trunk and branches alter¬ 
nately draw in and spread. Others 
are like hydatids, and have their ge- 





a 


THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


nerations in the skin. And all appear 
to be hermaphrodites. 

Many animalculae have the power 
of resurrection, and after being dry 
rains for year3, revive again on 
eing put in a drop of water, and this 
may be repeated 10 or 12 times, if 
they are kept in sand, however dry. 

They abound as a sort of tadpoles 
in the semen of all male animals, 
from man to the smallest insect. 

The foul matter of dirty teeth 
abound in a sort of eels. Diseases of 
the skin are generally occasioned by 
them, or they accompany such mor¬ 
bid parts in various forms. 

The little animal which makes ra¬ 
pid circles on water is the gyrinus or 
water flea. When disturbed they dart 
into the water. 

Animalcules are not to be found in 
all fluids. None are to be found in 
wines, or any other fermented liquor 
which has not passed into the state 
of vinegar, or which has not become 
completely vapid, neither are they to 
be found in distilled or spring water. 
About three hundred of these minute 
animals are described by naturalists, 
and arranged in fifteen genera, or 
families. The principal one is called 
vorticella, from the mouth being sur¬ 
rounded by numerous short feelers, 
forming a kind of fringe round the 
head; and by the motion of these 
feelers they form an eddy or vortex 
in the water, which draws their prey 
into their mouths. The wheel animal 
has, also, the very extraordinary pro¬ 
perty of reviving after it has been left 
dry for some months on a glass. 

If paste made with flour and water 
is suffered to go sour, without be¬ 
coming mouldy, the surface will soon 
be found covered with an infinite 
number of minute living beings, 
which, from their general similarity 
to that animal, have been called eels. 
The same animals, or as some au¬ 
thors think, a different species, is 
found in bad vinegar, and other mild 
acids. These animals are viviparous, 
and their increase is astonishing, but 
a hundred or more have been seen to 
issue from one single eel. 

The volvox globator, or globe ani¬ 
mal, is one of the most curious as 
well as one of the most beautiful of 
the animalcules; it is found in the 
clearer kinds of stagnant waters, and 


often equals the size of a pin’s head. 
Its general colour is green, but it is 
sometimes of a pale orange; its mo¬ 
tions are irregular in all directions, 
and at the same time rolling or spin¬ 
ning as if on an axis. When micro¬ 
scopically examined, it presents one 
of the most curious phenomena in 
natural history, being always preg¬ 
nant with several smaller animals of 
its own kind, and these with others 
still smaller. 

Cheese mites are found not only in 
cheese, but in preserves, meal, dried 
flesh, and other articles of dome-stick 
consumption ; they have as regular 
a figure, and perform all the func¬ 
tions of life, as creatures that exceed 
them many times in bulk; they have 
a sharp snout, and a mouth that 
opens and shuts like a mole’s; they 
are so extremely quick-sighted, that 
when they have been once touched 
with a pin, they avoid a second touch. 
The various parts of the body are 
covered with long hairs, and even 
these hairs are bristly. From the 
eggs of the females the young are 
hatched in twelve or fourteen days, 
and are so small that ninety millions 
are not so large as a pigeon’s egg. 
Their manner of feeding is by thrust¬ 
ing alternately one jaw forward and 
the other backward, and in this man¬ 
ner grinding their food, and after they 
have done feeding they seem to chew 
the cud. 

The wings of insects afford an im¬ 
mense variety of interesting and 
beautiful objects. Some are covered 
with scales, as in the butterfly tribe. 
Some are adorned with fringes of 
feathers, and the ribs or veins are 
also feathered, as in many of the gnat 
family, and even these scales and 
feathers are ribbed and fluted in a 
variety of ways. The earwig is not 
generally known to have wings, from 
their being folded up on the back into 
so small a compass. In size wings 
differ as much as in every other par¬ 
ticular, some are so minute as to be 
scarcely perceptible, and others are 
several inches in length. The elytra, 
or wing-cases, of many insects are 
beautifully transparent objects, such 
as those of the boat-fly, the grass¬ 
hopper tribe, and many of the minute 
cicadae, or frog-hoppers, &c. 

The greater part of the head of 
most flies is taken up by two protu- 




65 


THfi ANIMAL KINGDOM. 


berances, which on minute examina¬ 
tion with a common magnifier seem 
to be reticulated, or similar to net 
work. These are the animals’ eyes, 
and consist of an immense number 
of convex lenses. In the libellula, or 
dragon-fly, there have been counted 
upwards of 25,000 of a hexagonal 
figure and a brilliant polish. The eyes 
of crabs and lobsters, and all that 
family, consist of lenses of a square 
form. 

In digging ponds in the interiour of 
countries it is found that in some 
countries they soon abound in vari¬ 
ous fish. The soil having been un¬ 
der the sea in remote ages the spawn 
may exist in the sand, the fish being 
vivified by the access of water just as 
the germs of animalculae are revived 
by water in the vegetable substances 
infused; and into which they may 
have been conveyed by the circula¬ 
tion of the plant. 

The instincts of animals are their 
habits and practices resulting from 
their varied forms and natural pow¬ 
ers. They fly, swim, crawl, run, 
&c. and eat and locate agreeably to 
their respective experienced conve¬ 
nience, and the young universally 
follow the habits of their parents, 
and education becomes their nature 
generating peculiarities in each kind. 
They thus replenish the earth, pro¬ 
mote its intense fertility, and become 
useful and necessary parts of a ge¬ 
neral circle of orgamck life. 

All animals display varied and 
strong intelligence, but we notice 
most those acts which resemble our 
own. Thus, the species of the mo- 
tacilly, called the tailor-bird, asto¬ 
nishes by sewing two leaves together 
with vegetable fibres as with a needle 
and thread, for its nest. The night¬ 
ingale, wren, robin, &c. are other 
species. 

All animals derive their heat and 
nervous power from the chymical 
combination of the oxygen in the air 
with antagonist elements in the 
lungs or parts equivalent; and their 
ower of locomotion from reacting 
v their muscles against the earth, 
water, or air. 

Reproduction is also evidenced in 
the growth of trees from slips and 
cuttings, of polype and worms from 
small fragments, and of the renewal 

F 2 


of the claws of crabs and lobsters 
with all their nerves and parts in 
perfection. 

The power of reproduction in in¬ 
sects is one of the most wonderful 
parts of their economy. On behead¬ 
ing a slug, a new head with all its 
complex appurtenances will grow 
again; so will the feet of a Salaman¬ 
der and the claws of lobsters. The 
end of a worm split produces two 
perfect heads, and if cut into three 
pieces the middle reproduces a per¬ 
fect head and tail. 

The periods of gestation are the 
same in the horse and ass, or eleven 
months each. In the camel twelve 
months. In the elephant two years 
and in the lion but five months : in 
the dog and cat two months: in the 
cow nine months, and in sheep five 
months. The hen sits 21 days, the 
goose 30, and the duck 30. 

In 1813, a boa constrictor was 
killed in the isle of France, 14 feet 6 
inches long; in his stomach were 
found several animals, as monkeys, 
<fcc. half digested. 

There are 81 species of lacerta or 
lizard, of which the crocodile, the al¬ 
ligator, and guana are the chief. 
Those in England are very inoffen¬ 
sive, timid creatures, and one species 
is the water newt, three or four inches 
long. 

Twelve species of crocodiles have 
been distinguished, four of which 
are called alligators and two gavials. 
Those of the Nile are the largest, 
but they are now very uncommon ; 
at least in lower Egypt where a cro¬ 
codile would be regarded as a great 
curiosity. Their form is that of a 
lizard, sometimes thirty feet long, 
and nine or ten feet round. The 
body is covered with scales, hard 
enough to turn a musket ball; with 
a mouth several feet long, filled with 
teeth like a saw. They pursue their 
prey with agility, but cannot turn, 
ana, therefore, are easily escaped; 
but whatever is once caught is held 
fast, and if large drowned. They 
roar like a bull, and in winter are said 
to be torp;^. The females lay from 
thirty to one hundred eggs in a sea¬ 
son, but they are destroyed by the 
ichneumon; and some species of 
tortoise destroys their young. They 
are so tenacious of life that it is very 






ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


66 _ 

difficult to kill them. If well fed 
they become tame; and Labat, an 
African traveller, asserts that they 
are seen in villages without dread, 
and even played with by children. 
Their usual ferocity being ascribed 
solely to hunger. The excrements 
are vomited up and the crocodile is 
obliged to come on shore as often as 
he has occasion to ease himself. 

The testudo or tortoise is so long 
lived that two are recorded in Eng¬ 
land who lived 120 and 200 years, 
They know their friends and display 
much intelligence. The turtle of this 
genus is very large and subject to 
great cruelties to satisfy the whim of 
epicures. 

There are ten species of scorpions, 
mostly venomous, and some large. 

There are 36 species of the rana or 
frog genus, including toads, the whole 
being innoxious, while the common 
toad is curious from its longevity 
when enclosed in hollows of trees, 
and stones, and the Surinam toad 
from its producing its young from 
cells in its back. The American bull¬ 
frog 18 inches long, is so called from 
the frightful noise it makes in the 
woods. 

The progressive motion of serpents 
is effected by raising the body into 
arches, and fixing their hinder scales 
into the ground, and in this way they 
move backward and forward, the 
ribs concurring with an active mo¬ 
tion. They mostly swallow their 
food entire. The heart possesses two 
auricles and one venticle, and they 
all breathe. Hogs and goats kill 
and devour them. They live on land 
or in water either salt or fresh. The 
boa constrictor is from twenty to 
thirty-six feet long and is capable 
of swallowing deer, calves, or men 
whole, first crushing the bones by 
the strength of its folds ; it usually 
catches its prey by hanging from 
the branch of a tree near the places 
where animals go for water, and its 
destructive powers are as above, for 
it has no poison fangs. The colu- 
bre is from thirty to forty feet. The 
ringed or spotted snake found on 
dung hills in England is perfectly 
harmless, as are others, except one, 
and most of them may be tamed. 
The rattle-snake is from 5 to 8 feet 
long, but does not attack, and gives 
warning by the noise of rattling its 


tail. Eleven genera of serpents have 
no poison fangs and 19 have, but 
compared with the others they are 
very few in number. The chief of 
them are the rattle-snake, the cro- 
talus of Carolina, one genus in Ma¬ 
dagascar, another in Martinique, the 
naja of India and South America, the 
black adder of Sweden, and the viper 
or adder found in England and other 
European countries, which is about 
two feet long, the colour gray, with 
a chain of irregular spots on the 
back. 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 
OF MAN. 

The genus man is divisible, ac¬ 
cording to colour, into four species ; 
the white, the copper-coloured, the 
tawny, and the black. The whites 
are sanguine or reddish, dead white, 
and dark. The tawny are brown 
and dark brown, as the Arabs, Jews, 
Hindoos, Persians, &c. The dark, 
brown are the Calmuck Tartars, 
Chinese, and Gipsies. The copper- 
coloured are the native Americans. 
Other dark brown are the Malays 
and South Sea Islanders. The 
blacks are Negroes, with woolly hair, 
and Caffres, &c. with straight hair. 

The body consists of brain and 
nerves for sensation, muscles for 
motion, bones for strength, glands 
for secretion, arteries and veins for 
circulation, lacteals and lymphaticks 
for absorption, and lungs for heat and 
vital energy. 

Anatomy is the knowledge of the 
mechanical structure of the parts of 
the body. Physiology treats of the 
powers by which they produce their 
results in the living body. Patholo¬ 
gy treats of diseases and their symp¬ 
toms, the classification of which is 
called Nosology. Therapeutics treat 
of cure, and medicines to be applied, 
and includes the Materia Medica. 
Pharmacy is the art of compounding 
medicines, and Posology determines 
the doses. 

The human body consists of— 

240 bones, 

9 kinds of articulations or join¬ 
ings, 

100 cartilages and ligaments, 

400 muscles and tendons, 

I 100 nerves j 







ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OP MAN. 


besides blood, arteries, veins, glands, 

stomach, intestines, lungs, heart, 
liver, kidneys, lyinphaticks, lacteals, 
and three skins, the epidermis, the 
rete mucossum, and the true skin, be¬ 
neath which is the tela cellulosa, dis¬ 
tributed through the system, and 
surrounding every muscle and fibre, 
every artery, vein, nerve, and lym- 
phatick. 

The circulatory system consists of 
the heart and arteries, and of the 
veins and lungs. The compression,or 
systole of the left auricle, forces the 
red blood into the arteries; it is then 
brought back purple by the veins to 
the right auricle, compressed by it 
through the lungs, and reddened and 
vivified, is passed by the pulmonary 
veins to the left auricle, which expels 
it again through the system. Such 
is tne economy of all animals, the 
greatest and the smallest, the most 
egotistical and most despised. 

The vivification of the blood ap¬ 
pears to arise from its ch-ymical com¬ 
bination with oxygen, which thereby 
parting with its previous motion, that 
motion received by the blood is ani¬ 
mal heat and the power and energy 
of the system, or the principle and 
cause of vitality. The arteries dis¬ 
tribute universally, and the distinct 
veins absorb universally, taking up 
the nitrogen of the air at the skin, 
and the carbon of the system. 
Hence the chymical combinations 
in the lungs, expiration of carbonick 
acid gas, and the restoration of the 
excitable powers of the blood. Vital 
action in animals is simular to com¬ 
bustion, except that owing to the 
fluids, ignition does not take place. 

The stomach converts food into a. 
pulp called chyme , and passing into 
the intestines, bile converts it into a 
milky substance called chyle, in which 
state the lacteal absorbents convey 
it to the blood near the heart, through 
which it passes to the lungs and be¬ 
comes blood. 

There are 41 arteries or great 
branches which have received names. 
The pulmonary proceeds from the 
right ventricle of the contracting 
heart to the air-cells of the lungs. 
The aorta from the left ventricle 
through the system, and after rising 
to the first rib, crosses in an aren 
the thorax and belly,, and divides 
into two. Others are branches of 


_6t 

these. The arteries felt behind the 

wind-pipe are the carotid: the artery 
which runs over the jaw bone, and 
its branches which supply the lips 
and face, is the facial or labial ar¬ 
tery and a branch of the carotid. 
The artery felt at the temples is a 
seventh branch of the carotid, and 
called the temporal artery. The 
artery which passes inside of the 
arm is called humeral. 

Bones are composed of gelatinous 
fibres in net work, and of earthy salts, 
as phosphate, carbonate, and sul¬ 
phate of lime. The gelatine pre¬ 
vails in young animals, and hence 
their bones are more flexible. In the 
foetus the bones are gristly, and os¬ 
sification commences at their cen¬ 
tres. Bones have blood vessels. 

The bones in the head consist of— 

1. Frontal or coronal. 

2. Parietal. 

3. Temporal. 

4. Occepital. 

5. Sphenoid. 

6. Ethmoid. 

7. Nasal. 

8. Ungual. 

9. Cheek. 

10. Upper jaw. 

11. Palate. 

12. Spongy or nostril. 

13. Vomer or nasal. 

14. Lowerjaw. 

There are three sutures, the coro¬ 
nal, the sagittal, and the lamboidal. 

The head has 77 muscles. 

8 for the eyes and eye-lids. 

1 for the nose. 

8 for the lips. 

8 for the jaw. 

11 for the tongue. 

11 for the larynx, 

11 for the ear. 

17 for motions of the head and 
neck. 

1 to move the hairy scalp, and 
another the eye-brows. 

The muscles of the human jaw 
exert a force of 534 lbs. and those of 
mastiffs, wolves, &c. far more. The 
force is produced by the swelling of 
the muscles in the middle, and dila¬ 
ting again. The entire muscular 
system to the ground concurring by 
the vigorous reaction called health. 
Those muscles which perform in¬ 
voluntary motions receive nerves 
from the spinal marrow and cere- 




68 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


brum, and those voluntary from the 
cerebellum. 

New born infants are twenty-one 
inches long, and weigh from 10 to 15 
lbs. 

The four front teeth in each jaw 
come first in eight or ten months; 
the four canine or eye teeth in ten 
months; the sixteen grinders from 
twelve to fourteen months. At twen¬ 
ty-two or twenty-four years, four 
other grinders come, making thirty- 
six. 

Absorbents which convey chyle to 
the thoracick duct are called lacteals; 
and those which collect other fluids 
in the system, and convey them to 
the same duct arecalled Iymphaticks. 
The lacteals, Iymphaticks, and their 
elands, the mesenterick glands, and 
the thoracick duct, are the absorbent 
system. The fluids taken up by the 
Iymphaticks are prepared by the lym- 
phatick glands; and the chyle is pre¬ 
pared by the mysenterick gland, be¬ 
fore either pass into the thoracick 
duct, situated on the right side, near 
the first vertebras of the loins. It 
ascends to the left side of the neck, 
and enters the venous system at an 
angle formed by the subclavian and 
jugular veins, in the passage of the 
venous blood to the lungs. 

The chest, filled by the lungs, ex¬ 
tends from the neck to the pit of the 
stomach, and is lined with the pleu¬ 
ra, a firm fibrous membrane. The 
lungs are large spongy substances; 
and the right lung is divided into 
three lobes, or divisions, and the 
left into two. They are of lighter 
colour in youth than age, glossy and 
elastick. They join the windpipe, 
heart, and spine, but in other parts 
are free. They are composed of 
cells, of innumerable ramifications 
of blood-vessels in the cells, for ex¬ 
posure to the inspired air, and of 
nerves and Iymphaticks. 

The wind-pipe is composed of six¬ 
teen or eighteen cartilaginous rings, 
about the twelfth of an inch broad, 
and joined by elastic ligaments. 

The diaphragm, whose action com¬ 
presses or dilates the lungs, and on 
which they rest, is a fleshy parti¬ 
tion which divides the chest from 
the belly. It is arched towards the 
lungs, but flattens during a strong 
inspiration, and rises during a 
strong expiration. The dilating mus¬ 


cles are four, with ten auxiliary, and 
the contracting are six, with four 
auxiliary. 

The larynx, or organ of voice, is a 
cavity composed of moveable pieces, 
twice as large in men as women. 
Its five cartilages are moved by 
eight pair of muscles, and fifteen 
other pairs are connected with its 
varied powers. 

The small intestines are four or 
five times longer than the whole 
body of the body to which they belong. 

The spleen, of which the use has 
not been discovered, is found in all 
vertebral animals. It is always near 
the stomach, and near the first in 
those that have several. 

The gall-bladder in the human 
subject is in the shape of a pear, and 
the size of a hen’s egg. It lies on 
the concave side of the liver. It 
sometimes forms calculus secretions, 
which, in passing to the duodenum 
create great pain and danger. 

The diaphragm is the membrane 
which divides the thorax from the 
abdomen. 

The diastole is the expansion of 
the heart, &c.; and the systole is its 
contraction. 

The skeleton of a man weighs 
from 12 to 16 lbs. and the blood 27 or 
28 lbs. 

In monstrous births without brains, 
the functions of vitality proceed. 

A female skeleton of the same age 
is smaller than a male. The head, 
hands, and feet are smaller, the neck 
longer, the pelvis wider and deeper, 
and the prominences less. 

The specifick gravity of blood is 
from 1085 to 1126, and its tempera¬ 
ture is from 97° to 102°. 

The human figure is equal to ten 
faces. One-thira from the crown to 
the forehead; one to the chin; to the 
pit of the collar bones two-thirds; 
from the pit to bottom of the breast 
one; from the bottom of the breast 
to the navel one; from thence to the 
privates one; to the knee two; the 
knee half; from the lower part of the 
knee to the ancle two; and to the r 
sole half:—in all ten. When the 
arms are extended, the distance of 
the tips of the longest fingers are 
equal to the height. From one side 
of the breast to the other is two 





ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


69 


faces', from the shoulder to the elbow 
two; from this to the root of the little 
finger two. The sole of the foot is a 
sixth of the height. The thumb equal 
to the nose. The teats and pit be¬ 
tween the collar-bones of a woman 
is an equilateral triangle. The length 
of the face and hands is equal. S uch 
are the proportions of painters and 
sculptors in perfect figures. 

The' facial angle is the horizontal 
angle formed by aline, parallel to the 
bottom of the nose, with another line 
from the level of the upper jaw to the 
ridge of the frontal bone. It is 
In Europeans from 75 to 85° 
In American Indians 73£ 

In Africans 70* 

In ourang outangs 65 

In monkeys 57 

In dogs 40 

In sheep # SO 

In a horse 23 

The number of teeth at maturity is 
thirty-two, or sixteen in each jaw. 
The eight front ones are called cut¬ 
ting teeth; and the two next on each 
side are called dog or eye teeth. The 
two next are two pointed teeth; and 
the three next on each side are called 
molares, or grinders. The two last 
are called wisdom teeth, as they are 
out last. 

Teeth are phosphate of lime and 
cartilage, but the enamel is without 
cartilage. 

The teeth of an adult have a specif- 
ick gravity of 2.27; and those of 
children 2.08. 

The brain, under the skull, is in¬ 
vested with the dura mater, a mem¬ 
brane with arteries. 

Within the dura mater, and adhe¬ 
ring to the brain is the pia mater, a 
very fine transparent membrane, 
filled with blood-vessels; but a finer 
membrane lies above this, called 
raembrana arachnoidea. 

The brain is called the encephalon. 
Its portions are the cerebrum , which 
occupies the top and front of the 
skull; the cerebellum , which rests 
on the base of the skull behind, and 
separated from the cerebrum by a 
fold of the dura mater; and the me¬ 
dulla oblongata, or commencement 
of the spinal marrow, which projects 
upward into the centre of the cnce- 
pnalciL 


The whole is composed of soft 
pulpy matter, in various convolution 
and prominences. 

The cerebrum has three lobes, or 
round parts; the middle called the 
corpus callosum: and it consists of 
two kinds of matter, the outside red¬ 
dish-gray, and the middle bluish- 
white, and softer. 

The cerebellum has two lobes, and 
is of firmer consistence than the cere¬ 
brum. 

The medulla oblongata lies between 
the lobes of the cerebellum and the 
middle lobe of the cerebrum, from 
which it is separated by a streaked 
medullary part, called the pons va- 
rolii. 

The spinal marrow is a continua¬ 
tion of the medulla oblongata, which, 
unlike the cerebrum, has the bluish- 
white outside and the reddish-gray 
inside. It is divided down the mid¬ 
dle, and enclosed by the pia and dura 
mater. 

The four are considered as the com¬ 
mon sensorium. The cerebrum being 
the organ of sensation; the cerebel¬ 
lum of the will, and the medulla ob¬ 
longata and spinal marrow extend¬ 
ing their functions to the system. 
The weight is nearly four pounds in 
a male adult, and in the female not 
so much. 

A tenth part of the whole mass of 
blood is continuall y in theoncephalom 

From various parts of the encepha¬ 
lon, and from the spinal marrow, 
pass white medullary chords in paral¬ 
lel waving threads, and invested at 
first with the dura mater, and then 
with a cellular membrane. They 
run in pairs; and one is for sense, the 
other for motion, when both objects 
are to be effected. They often unite 
in a knotty cluster, called ganglions, 
which send out more fibres ; and 
some different nerves, -unite in net¬ 
work, called plexus. 

Nine pairs proceed from the ence¬ 
phalon, and thirty from the spinql 
marrow. 

Modern physiologists divide the 
vital powers into muscular contrac¬ 
tility, nervous agency, sensorial 
power, and organick affinities. The 
origin of these modes of excitement 
appears to be the power which is de¬ 
rived by the lungs from the energy 
of the atmosphere; which energy is 






70_ANATOMY AND PIT 

transferred by them to the blood and 
to the system. The gas respired con¬ 
sists essentially of atoms in circular 
motion; by chymical union a portion 
of these part with their motion in the 
lungs, and those motions are trans¬ 
ferred to the system. 

The prime agent in animal sys¬ 
tems is described to be the cellular 
tissue, or membranes, which extend 
through every part of the body, un¬ 
der various names and functions. It 
constitutes what is called tone, and 
vigour in the system, which depend 
on the facility of its contractions. 

The cause of muscular contrac¬ 
tility has produced numerous theo¬ 
ries, with which anatomists have 
not mingled animal experience, but 
have regarded the power of muscles 
as powers per se. Nervous agency 
has also produced numerous theories, 
the nerves being considered as sepa¬ 
rate from the general identity of the 
animal. Sensorial power has also 
been examined as a property of the 
substances, and not as a result mere¬ 
ly personal. 

The most important discovery re¬ 
lative to the nerves has been lately 
made by Mr. Charles Bell, who 
proves that nerves are not single, but 
that the combination possesses dif¬ 
ferent powers; two filaments being 
united for convenience of distribution, 
while their office and their origin are 
distinct. The tongue, for example, 
has nervous papillae for taste, and 
others for feeling; one sort commu¬ 
nicate pain or feeling, and the other 
the sense of taste. Mr.-Bell shows 
that the nerves which proceed from 
the front and back of the spinal mar¬ 
row have totally different functions, 
though they spread through the sys¬ 
tem in pairs and in contact. Those 
which issue from the posterior part 
might be cut without convulsing the 
muscles; but the mere touching 
those from the anterior part produ¬ 
ces convulsions. One set he finds to 
perform the functions of sensation 
and the will, exquisitely sensible and 
universally diffused; the other set 
are connected with the functions of 
respiration, circulation, secretion, 
and muscular motion. 

The brain itself appears to have 
distinct functions like the nerves; the 
chief part of it may be cut away or 
removed without affecting the power 


r SIOLOG Y OF MAN._ 

of voluntary motion or giving pain, 
and this part is considered as the 
cerebrum , which appears to be the 
organ of sensation; the animal, on 
its being removed, losing its powers 
of sensation: while, if the cerebellum 
or posterior part, is removed, the ani¬ 
mal loses the power of voluntary 
motion. The organ of feeling in this 
analysis appears to be the medulla 
oblongata , and adjoining part of the 
spinal marrow. 

These facts being established by 
various experiments on living ani¬ 
mals, often exceedingly cruel, it may 
be hoped that they will not be re¬ 
peated from motives of wanton curi¬ 
osity. 

In less complicated animals, Mr. 
Bell found the nerves for different 
purposes more decidedly distinct 
than in the higher classes. 

In the foetus, the first part of the 
nervous system that is formed is the 
spinal marrow; the upper part of 
which is enlarged, and the brain 
succeeds. The sensorial powers are 
not developed till the frame-work of 
the body is matured; and their con¬ 
tinuance depends on the perfect co¬ 
operation of the circulating system. 

Gall considers the brain as a col¬ 
lection of distinct organs, the form 
and expansion of which distinguish 
the intellectual powers and predo¬ 
minating passions of individuals. Its 
functions are three—organick, sensi¬ 
tive, and intellectual; to each of these 
purposes he assigns a particular or¬ 
gan. He divides the parts of the en¬ 
cephalon into twenty-seven organs, 
in three classes; those of organick 
life one; those of sensation and per¬ 
ception ; and those which relate to 
reasoning and intellectual energy, on 
the vertex and smooth part of the 
forehead, which expands as animals 
advance in intellect. 

In cases where the brain has been 
removed, there has been no produc¬ 
tion of heat from respiration artifi¬ 
cially kept up.— Brodie. 

When the nerves to any gland are 
injured or divided, the secretion of the 
gland is modified in quantity or qua¬ 
lity.— Home. 

Nine pair of nerves issue from the 
brain, and the other thirty-one from 
the spinal marrow. The nervous 
system has an intelligence: which 








ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


has been considered analogous to 
the web of a spider, or the net of a 
fisherman. 

A healthy liver weighs nearly 4 
lbs. but diseased ones become four 
or five times heavier. 

The number of ribs vary, being 
twelve or thirteen on a side. 

Inordinary respiration, 16 or 17 cu¬ 
bick inches of atmospherick air pass 
into the lungs 20 times in a minute, 
or a cubick foot every 5.25 minutes; 
274 cubick feet in 24 hours, or a cube 
of feet each way. The lungs hold 
280, and at each expiration 1.375 of 
the oxygen is converted into carbon- 
ick acid gas; in 63 minutes a cubick 
foot, and nearly 23 feet in 24 hours. 
The loss in bulk, per respiration, is 
but .006 or 0.12 per minute, or only 
the tenth of a foot in 24 hours. The 
nitrogen inspired and expired is ex¬ 
actly equal. If then the relative spe¬ 
cifics heat or atomick motion of oxy¬ 
gen, and carbonick acid, as the mean 
of Crawford and Dalton be taken as 
3.65 to 1; and the absolute heat of a 
cubick foot of oxygen, as 876° ; the 
difference between inspired oxygen 
and expired carbonick ac-id is 688° for 
every foot in 63 minutes, 0.53° per 
respiration, or 688° X 23 = 15824° 
+ 87.6°, or 15911.6° in all, for heat 
and strength in ordinary respiration 
per day. 

Vegetable aliments are gum, jelly, 
starch, gluten, oil, sugar, and acids. 

Animal aliments ar e gelatine, or 
jelly, albumen as the white of an egg, 
f brine or muscular fibres, and fat , 
also blood and milk. 

Puberty in northern climates com¬ 
mences from 15 to 20, but in India 
and Arabia from 11 to 14. Age in 
the fonner from 45 to 70, and in the 
latter from 30 to 45. 

Contracting muscles are called 
fiexor muscles; expanding muscles 
extensor ; the pair antagonists. 

Lime combined with phosphorick 
acid is the basis of bones, and found 
also in the fluids. Shells consist of 
carbonate of lime; and hence their 
remains have been considered as the 
basis of lime-stone mountains. Sili¬ 
ca and manganese are found in the 
hair. Iron, with phosphorick acid, 
constitutes part of the blood. 

The fluids of animals contain al¬ 
kalies, especially soda. 


71 

The specifick gravity of red arterial 
blood is one-twentieth greater than 
water. The serum, or whey part, is 
but one-fortieth heavier than water; 
but the cruor, or coagulated part, is 
one-fourth heavier than water. The 
serum coagulates in water nearly 
boiling ; and consists of gelatine, 
soda, phosphate of lime, and ammo¬ 
nia. The cruor contains subphos¬ 
phate of iron, and some soda and 
albumen. 

Venous blood is dark or crimson; 
but restored to its red colour by pass¬ 
ing through the lungs. 

The heart, by its muscular con¬ 
traction, distributes two ounces of 
blood from seventy to eighty times 
in a minute. 

The spinal cord is formed in the 
foetus before the brain, and animals 
are perfect as it is perfect. 

The sense of feeling is.preated by 
the papillae of the skin, consisting of 
small white nervous fibres, which 
erect themselves when the sense of 
touch is excited. 

The sense of taste by the tongue 
and palate, by means of nervous pa¬ 
pillae. 

The sense of smell is in the nerves 
of the pituitary or mucous mem-, 
brane. 

The sense of hearing is effected 
by a mechanism which conveys the 
vibrations to the internal parts, 
where nervous fibres are distributed. 
The drum of the ear is called the 
membrana tympanum; and its vi¬ 
brations are conveyed to four bones 
in the internal cavity, which again 
propagate the vibration to a double 
spiral cavity, called the cochlea. 

The eye is an optical instrument^ 
The outer coat is the sclerotick mem¬ 
brane. The fore part is the cornea , 
made up of concentrick layers. Be¬ 
tween this and the former lies the 
white of the eye, covered by the mem¬ 
brana conjunctiva , that lines the out¬ 
side of the eye-lids. 

Within the sclerotica, and concen¬ 
trick with it, is the choroid mem¬ 
brane. At the back part it is perfo¬ 
rated by the optick nerve, where it 
forms the retina , which covers the 
choroid. 

About three-fourths of the globe 
are filled with the vitreous humour, 
like the white of an egg. In front is 







72 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


the crystalline lens, convex on each 
side, but more so inward. It is com¬ 
posed of transparent laminae, more 
dense towards the centre. The front 
is filled with the aqueous humour, in 
the middle of which floats the iris, 
or coloured membrane. The speci- 
fick gravity of the humours is but a 
200th more than water; but the lens 
one-thirteenth more than water. 
They consist of water and albumen 
and gelatine. The iris is supplied 
with blood-vessels and nerves, and 
is very irritable, contracting and di¬ 
lating to the light, and appearing to 
fee governed by the retina. 

Between the ball of the eye and 
the vault of the orbit lies the lacry- 
mal gland which secretes tears, and 
consists of two lobes with several 
small canals. 

The blind youth who was couched 
by Chesselden in his thirteenth year, 
thought scarlet the most beautiful of 
all colours; but black was painful. 
He fancied every object touched him. 
He could not distinguish, by sight, 
objects which he knew by feeling ; 
and was some time learning to dis¬ 
tinguish, by his new sense, between 
the cat and the dog. Those things 
which he had liked best-, were not 
equally agreeable to his sight; and 
he had to learn by sight the name of 
every thing he saw, constantly for¬ 
getting ana mistaking one thing for 
another. Pictures he considered as 
party-coloured surfaces, and he had 
no idea of the effect of light and. 
shade; a miniature portrait much 
astonished him, it seemed like put¬ 
ting a bushel into a pint. He could 
not conceive how the house could 
look bigger than the room. He said 
every new object was a new delight. 
An extensive prospect he called a 
new kind of seeing. When his second 
eye was couched, he said he thought 
objects did not appear so large to this 
eye as they did at first to the other; 
and on viewing the same object with 
both eyes, he said they appeared 
twice as large. He and others, whom 
Mr. Chisselden operated upon, de¬ 
scribed it as learning to see; and, at 
first, had great difficulty in directing 
their eyes to an object. 

Sir Everard Home couched some 
young persons with results exactly 
similar to those of Chesselden. They 
could not tell the name of any object 


till alley were told what it was, or till 
they felt it, and had no idea of dis¬ 
tances. The blind, however, make 
up for defect of sight, by the accu¬ 
racy and sensibility of their touch, 
and by habits of association between 
the touch, memory, and judgment. 
Stanley, the organist, and many 
blind musicians, have been the best 
performers of their time^ and the 
blind discriminate sounds at a dis¬ 
tance with infinitely greater preci¬ 
sion than persons who depend on 
their visual organs. Miss Chambers, 
a schoolmistress at Nottingham, 
could discern that two boys were 
playing in a distant part of the room; 
instead of studying their books, 
though a person who saw them, and 
made no use of his ears, could not 
perceive that they made the smallest 
noise: and in this way she kept a 
most orderly school: so professor 
Sanderson could, in a few moments, 
tell how many persons were in a 
mixed company, and presently dis¬ 
criminate their sexes by the mere 
rustling of their clothes. Stanley, 
and other blind persons, played at 
cards by delicately pricking them 
with a pin. A French lady could 
dance in figure dances, sew tambour, 
and thread her needle. The ear too, 
guides as to distance, by reflection 
of sound, and within these few years 
a blind man, from his infancy, wa3 
a surveyor and planner of roads in 
Derbyshire. When a sense is wanted, 
the other senses are cultivated with 
care. 

The colour of the skin depends on 
the colour of the rete mucosum, a 
soft gelatinous cellular substance, 
which lies between the cuticle or 
scarf skin and the cutis or real skin. 
In blacks this membrane contains a 
black fluid. The blood of blacks 
and whites is the same colour, and 
the darkening of the rete mucosum 
is ascribed by Blumenbach to car¬ 
bon and to the increase of bilious se¬ 
cretions in hot climates. 

There is iron enough in the blood 
of 42 men to make a plough share 
weighing about 24 pounds. 

A man is taller in the morning 
than at night to the extent of half an 
inch or more, owing to the relaxa¬ 
tion of the cartilages. 

The human brain is the 28th of 
the body, but in the horse but a 400th. 






73 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


The lungs, owing to the continued 

local accession of fresh cold air, are 
the coldest part of the body, and the 
degrees of heat which they generate 
is successively carried away by the 
blood. 

The non-naturals are air, food, and 
drink, sleep, and watching, motion, 
and rest, the passions, and the se¬ 
cretions and excretions. 

Food is converted in the stomach 
into a pulpy mass called chyme. It 
then passes into the pylorus and du¬ 
odenum and is converted into chyle, 
which is taken up by the lacteals, 
while the mass is passing the intes¬ 
tines, and the excrementitious parts 
pass through the colon and rectum. 

The Englishman’s skull averages 
7 inches in diameter, and the female 
6£. Yorkshire, &c. averages 7£ ; 
and Scotland 7§. 

It has been computed that nearly 
two year’s sickness is experienced by 
every person before he is 70 years 
old, and therefore that ten days per 
annum is the average sickness of 
human life. Till forty it is but half, 
and after fifty it rapidly increases. 

Endemick diseases are those of dis¬ 
tricts ; epidemicks are those of sea¬ 
sons or particular times. 

So great, says Dr. Currie, are the 
difficulties of tracing out the hidden 
causes of the disorders to which this 
frame of ours is subject, that the 
most candid of the profession have 
allowed and lamented how unavoid¬ 
ably they are in the dark, so that the 
best medicines, administered with 
the wisest heads, shall often do the 
mischief they intend to prevent. 

f there be any universal medicine 
in nature it is water; for by its as¬ 
sistance all distempers are alleviated 
or cured, and the body preserved 
sound and free from corruption, that 
enemy to life.— Hoffman. 

Dr. Young divides the remedies of 
the materia medica into four classes; 
mechanical agents, chymical agents, 
vital agents, and insensible agents : 

1. Air, diet, habits, passions, &c. 

2. Causticks, astringents, &c. 

3. Excitants, catharticks, &c. 

4. Specificks. 

A dispensary supplies medicine for 
the poor on application, and superin¬ 
tends the effects at their own houses. 

G 


A hospital receives tli as pa¬ 
tients, and provides for them as long 
as medicine can relieve them, and ad¬ 
vises in case of personal application 
as out-patients. An infirmary unites 
the objects of both. But there are 
no public Asylums for convales¬ 
cence and virtuous old age. 

Vegetable poisons are numerous, 
the acrid are briony root, bitter ap¬ 
ple, hellebore, spurge, wolfsbane, 
meadow, anemone, narcissus, and 
ranunculus. The narcotick , as hem¬ 
lock, henbane, laurel, opium, stramo¬ 
nium, tobacco, coculus indicus, fox¬ 
glove, nux vomica or ratsbane, mea¬ 
dow saffron, elaterium, fool’s pars¬ 
ley, and fungi. The mineral poisons 
are arsenick, corrosive sublimate, ox- 
alick acid, sulpliurick acid, nitrick 
acid or aquafortis, verdigris, white 
vitriol, and white lead.' Among the 
uses, carbonick acid, nitrogen, hy- 
rogen, chlorine, &c. 

Diseases of cattle often afflict 
men who subsist on them. In 1515 
and 1578, nearly all the sheep in 
France perished by a disease re¬ 
sembling the small pox ; and in 1599 
the Venetian government to stop a 
fatal disease among the people, pro¬ 
hibited the sale of meat, butter, or 
cheese on pain of death. The mur¬ 
rain of cattle has a bubo like the 
plague, and from 1705 to 1714 it 
spread among cattle, sheep, and 
horses all over Europe, 5857 dying 
in Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey ; 
and Europe lost one million and a 
half. It affected men who ate the 
flesh, according to Sauvages, de¬ 
stroying at Nismes the tongue in 24 
hours, and Paris was similarly af¬ 
flicted in 1576. From 1740 to 1750 
the cattle, &c. were attacked by dis¬ 
ease like the small pox in all parts of 
Europe, and it was considered as’a 
cause of spreading that disease 
among the eaters. 300000 died in 
the Papal states only. Inoculation 
was tried, and the vaccine pope is 
considered as a mild species. In 
1764, horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, poul¬ 
try, &c. died in thousands all over 
Europe. In Holland only 208354. 

Vegetables poisonous to man, 
prove innoxious to other animals, 
while some which men eat with im¬ 
punity are fatal to some animals. 
Parsley kills parrots : prussick acid 
and bitter almonds, lull dogs and 






74 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


some birds*, opium and arsenick have 
a diminished effect on dogs. 

The poison so freelv administered 
by Italians in the 17th. century was 
called aqua tofana, from the name of 
the old woman Tofama, who made 
and sold it in small flat vials which 
she called manna of St.. Nicholas, 
on one side of which was an image 
of the saint; she carried on this traf- 
fick for half a century and eluded the 
police, but on being taken, confessed 
that she had been a party in poison¬ 
ing 600 people. Numerous persons 
were implicated by her of all ranks, 
and many of them were publickly 
executed. All Italy was thrown into 
a ferment, and many fled, while some 
persons of distinction,, on conviction, 
were strangled in prison. It appeared 
to have been chiefly used by mar¬ 
ried women who were tired of their 
husbands. Four or six drops were 
a fatal dose, but the effect was not 
sudden and therefore not suspected. 
It was as clear as water, but the chy- 
mists have not agreed about its real 
composition. A proclamation of the 
Pope described it as aquafortis dis¬ 
tilled into arsenick, and others consi¬ 
dered it as a solution of crystallized 
arsenick. The secret of its prepara¬ 
tion was conveyed to Paris where 
the Marchioness de Brinvaliers poi¬ 
soned her father and two brothers, 
and she with many others were ex¬ 
ecuted, and the preparersburnt alive. 

The Brunonian system takes its 
name from Dr. John Brown of Edin¬ 
burgh, who was born 1735 and died 
of apoplexy in 1788. He maintained, 
that disease was chiefly occasioned 
by debility for want of due excite¬ 
ment ; he therefore maintained the 
utility of increased stimulants, and 
thus by pampering the appetite and 
countenancing gluttony, his system 
for a time was very fashionable. 

The mixed and fanciful diet of man 
is considered as the cause of nume¬ 
rous diseases, from which animals 
are exempt. Many diseases have 
abated with changes of national diet, 
and others are virulent in particular 
countries, arising from peculiarities. 
The Hindoos are considered the 
freest from disease of any part of the 
human race. The labourers on the 
African coast, who go from tribe to 
tribe to perform the manual labour, 
and whose strength is wonderful, 


live entirely on plain rice. The Irish, 
Swiss, ana Gascons, the slaves of 
Europe, feed also on the simplest 
diet, the former chiefly on potatoes. 

Cannabalism has existed among 
all savage nations. St. Jerome savs 
some British tribes ate human flesh ; 
and the Scots from Galloway killed 
and ate the English in the reign of 
Henry I. The Scythians were drink¬ 
ers of hum an blood. Columbus found 
cannibals in America. The aborigi¬ 
nes of the Caribbee Islands w r ere can¬ 
nibals ; and some South American 
tribes, and most of the natives of the 
South Sea Islands, make it an open 
practice to eat human flesh : while 
in some African cities it is openly 
sold by the pound. 

Persons apparently drowned, or in 
whom animation is suspended, should 
be laid in warm blankets, with the 
head raised, and hot bricks, or bottles 
of hot water, applied to the soles of 
the feet, hands, stomach, and arm- 
pits; the body and limbs being well 
rubbed with the hands or warm flan¬ 
nels. The lungs should be inflated 
by blowing into one nostril, while 
the other and the mouth are stopt, 
and action given to the stomach as 
in breathing; and this should be con¬ 
tinued first through one nostril, and 
then through the other, till animation 
reappears. A clyster made of salt 
ana some mustard, with warm water, 
should be administered. Hartshorn 
or salts may also be applied now and 
then to the nostrils. On recovery 
some weak cordial should be given, 
and the person put into a warm 
bed. In cases of strangulation or 
apoplexy, bleeding should be imme¬ 
diately adopted, and the legs put in 
warm water. In cases of intoxica¬ 
tion or other poisoning, vomiting 
should be promoted, an emetick, or 
the stomach pump r administered. In 
cases of persons frozen, friction with 
snow or cold water is to be preferred. 

The annual Bills of Mortality were 
begun during a plague in 1592, and 
have been continued weekly since 
1603. No reliance is to be placed on 
their discrimination of diseases. 

One-fourth of the deaths in Lon¬ 
don are from consumption, and one- 
eighth of the deaths arise from drink¬ 
ing spirituous liquors; which has 
been greatly increased by the legis- 






75 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


lative measures to increase the con¬ 

sumption for the sake of revenue. 

The deaths from small-pox in Lon¬ 
don, in the twenty years previous 
to the promulgation of vaccination, 
were 36189; but in the next twenty 
years, only 22480. In the same pe¬ 
riods, in the Small-Pox Hospital, 
the numbers were 1867 and 814. The 
frequency of small-pox after vacci¬ 
nation seems to render it necessary 
to repeat the vaccination in seven or 
ten years. 

Dr. D’Arcet has proved that clothes 
infected by persons who have just 
died of the plague, are purified by 
being steeped in a chloruret of soda. 

Lady Mary Wortiey Montague in¬ 
troduced inoculation for the small¬ 
pox from Turkey. Her own son had 
been inoculated with perfect success 
at Adrianople in 1718. She was al¬ 
lowed to inoculate seven capital con¬ 
victs, who, on recovery, were par¬ 
doned. The practice was adopted by 
the enlightened, and therefore spread¬ 
ing the disease, it fatally increased 
among the vulgar and superstitious 
as interfering with God’s providence. 

Dr. Jenner made the first experi¬ 
ment in vaccination in May 1796, by 
transferring the pus from the pustule 
of a milkmaid, who had caught the 
cow-pox from the cows, to a healthy 
child ; and publishing the result, the 
practice spread through the civilized 
world. The power of the cow-pox 
as an antidote to small-pox, was a 
fact familiar to the common people 
for a century before Jenner’s promul- 

ation of it. The tables of mortality 

ave in consequence been so altered, 
that the average of life which used 
to be taken 30 and 33, now approxi¬ 
mates to 40. 

Previous to vaccination, the deaths 
from small-pox in London were 4000, 
or about one in five or six. Since, 
they have been reduced to an average 
of 1000, but the deaths from small¬ 
pox and cases after vaccination have 
latterly been on the increase. 

Infanticide is practised in many 
countries, but in some of the South 
Sea islands it is practised systemati¬ 
cally by a society called the Earo- 
vries, which consists of the heads of 
families, and are bound to destroy 
their own children. All the voyagers 
concur in describing this extraordi-. 


nary association. Two-thirds of the 
children born in Otaheite are imme¬ 
diately destroyed. 

Edward the Confessor was the first 
king of England who fancied he could 
cure the king’s evil by touching. 
This vulgar credulity had, in the age 
of Charles II., arisen to such a height, 
that in 14 years, 92107 were touched, 
and, according to Wiseman, the king’s 
physician, mostly cured! 

Caspar Hanser was shut up in a 
dungeon from four to sixteen. He 
spoke with difficulty and like a fo¬ 
reigner. He passed his time sitting 
in a cell 5 feet by 4, and had food ana 
water brought him. At first he could 
not walk, and had no idea of his 
power to move or of moving. The 
light of day oppressed him. All ob- 
ects disordered him, but musick fixed 
lis attention. At 16 he had no ideas 
whatever, nor any passions, but on 
his liberation he learned rapidly. 

The dwarf Jeffry Hudson was 3 
feet 9, and Count Borowlaski 2 feet 
4 inches. 

A female who in 1829 was 42 years 
of age, and resided at Pynacre, near 
Delph, had, from disease, not eaten 
any thing since 1818, nor drank any 
thing since 1820. Total exhaustion 
was prevented by damp wrappers. 

In 1800, a French prisoner at Liver¬ 
pool exhibited a most extraordinary 
propensity to devour nauseous diet, 
particularly cats, of which, in one 
year, he ate 174, many of them while 
alive. 

An Esquimaux boy, supplied by 
Captain Parry, ate in one day 101 lbs. 
of solid food, and drank of various 
liquids 1J gallon. A man of the same 
nation ate 10 lbs. of solids, including 
two candles, and drank 1J gallon, yet 
they were only from 4 to 4§ feet high. 

During the last great plague in Lon¬ 
don, one pit was dug in the Charter 
House, forty feet long, 16 feet wide, 
and 20 feet deep, and in a fortnight 
received 1114 bodies. During this 
dire calamity, there were instances of 
mothers carrying their own children 
to these publick graves-, and of people 
delirious, or in despair for the loss of 
friends, who threw themselves alive 
into these pits. 

The grain on which man chiefly 
subsists is rice, wheat, maize, barley, 
oats, and rye. 




76 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


Such is the force of education, and 
so much are men what the habits of 
infancy make them, that in spite of 
the conceits of the English when Flo¬ 
rida was ceded to England by a treaty 
with Spain in 1769, the whole of the 
Spanish population left the province 
and towns except one in a single 
town and ano ther single in the woods. 
The same feeling was exemplified by 
some inhabitants of Nova Zembla, 
who, on being brought to Denmark, 
and clothed and fed with every lux¬ 
ury of civilization, so pined for their 
return to their own inhospitable de¬ 
sert, that some of them died before 
they could be sent back. Something 
like this strong principle doubtless 
governs birds and animals in their re¬ 
turn to their native haunts. 

Vegetable aliment, as neither dis¬ 
tending the vessels, nor loading the 
system, never interrupts the stronger 
action of the mind; while the heat, 
fulness, and weight of animal food, 
is adverse to its vigorous efforts. 

Cullen. 

You ask me for what reason Pytha¬ 
goras abstained from eating the flesh 
of brutes; for my part, I am asto¬ 
nished to think what appetite first in¬ 
duced man to taste of a dead car¬ 
cass; or what motive could suggest 
the notion of nourishing himself with 
the loathsome flesh of dead animals. 

Plutarch. 

Nothing can be more shocking or 
horrid than one of our kitchens sprin¬ 
kled with blood and abounding with 
the cries of creatures expiring, or -with 
the limbs of dead animals scattered 
or hung up here and there. It gives 
one an image of a giant’s den in ro¬ 
mance, bestrewed with the scattered 
heads and mangled limbs of those 
who were slain by his cruelty. Pope. 

The common definition of man is 
false; he is not a reasoning animal. 
The best you can predicate of him is, 
that he is an animal capable of rea¬ 
soning. Warburton. 

The perception of a woman is as 
quick as lightning. Her penetration 
is intuition ; almost instinct. By a 
glance she will draw a deep and just 
conclusion. Ask her how she formed 
it, and she cannot answer the ques¬ 
tion. A philosopher deduces infer¬ 
ences ; and his inferences shall be 
right; but he gets to the head of the 
stair-case, if I may so say, by slow 


degrees, mounting step by step. She 
arrives at the top of the stair-case as 
well as he; but whether she flew 
there is more than she knows herself. 
While she trusts her instinct she is 
scarcely ever deceived, and she is 
generally lost when she begins to 
reason. Sherlock. 

In the year 1814 was living in the 
neighbourhood of Highgate, a mar¬ 
ried woman, aged 35, the whole of 
whose body, except the face, was ex¬ 
actly divided by a straight line into 
white and black. The right side, arm, 
and leg were black, and subject to 
eruptions; and the left side, arm, and 
leg altogether white. The neck, with 
her face, were white. Her children 
possessed none of her peculiarities. 

The Biddenham maids born in 
1100, had distinct bodies, &c., but 
were joined by the hips and shoul¬ 
ders. They lived to be 34; and 
i ne dying the other refused to be 
separated, and died in a short time. 
They left twenty acres to the poor, 
still distributed in bread every Easter 
Sunday. 

A more recent case of like kind is 
that of the Siamese or Chinese 
youths shown in London. They 
are joined by a band of cartilage and 
skin at the stomach, from two inches 
and a half to four inches long, and 
eight inches round, are healthy and 
cheerful, and one in body, incli¬ 
nations and habits. The band of 
union is considered as an enlarge¬ 
ment of the umbilical cord. There 
is no nervous connexion through the 
band, and their sympathy of feelings 
appears to be the result of habit 
from infancy to maturity. When 
both cough, the band is distended 
like a chronicle hernial sac. The ab¬ 
dominal cavities appear to communi¬ 
cate and to have but one peritoneal 
lining; but the viscera are distinct. 
At the exact line where one begins to 
feel the other ceases to feel, ana there 
is no point where both feel. They 
had a fever together, but not equally 
great, and both had a cold at the 
same time. Their evacuations are 
made together. They go to sleep to¬ 
gether and wake together exactly. 
They play at chess, and differ in 
ideas about moves—but in habits 
they are alike, and different in body, 
though they grew upon one placenta 
by one umbilical cord. 





ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MAN. 


77 


The late blind Justice Fielding 
walked in my room for the first 
lime, when he once visited me, and, 
after speaking a few words, said, 
“ This room is about twenty-two feet 
long, eighteen wide, and twelve 
highall which he guessed with 
the greatest accuracy by the ear.— 
Dancin . 

Most animals live in amity, but 
man is the enemy of all; and, un¬ 
like those ferocious creatures who 
kill from motives excited by want 
and hunger, man kills every thing 
for sport, aversion, fear, superstition, 
wantonness, and often for the mere 
sake of seeing that dead which was 
living in enjoyment. In consequence, 
he destroys the natural circle of ex¬ 
istence, and reduces countries which 
he inhabits to deserts, like the once 
fertile kingdoms of Assyria, Baby¬ 
lonia, Nineveh, Judea, Syria, &c. 

About the age of thirty-six the lean 
man usually becomes fatter, and the 
fat man leaner. Again, between the 
years forty-three and fifty, his appe¬ 
tite fails ? his complexion fades, and his 
tongue is apt to be furred upon the 
least exertion of body or mind. At 
this period his muscles become flab¬ 
by, his joints weak, his spirits droop, 
and his sleep is imperfect and unre¬ 
freshing. After suffering under these 
complaints, a year, or perhaps two, 
he starts afresh with renewed vigour, 
and goes on to sixty-one or sixty- 
two, when a similar change takes 
place, but with aggravated symp¬ 
toms. When these grand periods 
have been successively passed, the 
gravity of incumbent years is more 
strongly marked, and he begins to 
boast of his age. Dr. Waterhouse. 

The grand climacterick in human 
life varied between sixty and seven¬ 
ty ; and was an astrological period, 
which depended on the revolutions of 
Jupiter and Saturn, five of one and 
two of the other making the climac¬ 
terick age. By the English law in¬ 
fancy in males extends to twenty- 
one, and in females to twenty; but 
the ancients reckoned the period of 
adolesence to twenty-five. 

Total abstinence above seven 
days is fatal to man; but there are 
instances of surviving after a longer 
period. A religious fanatick, in 1789, 
determined to fast forty days, and 
died on the sixteenth. 

G 2 


The quantity of pure water which 
blood in its natural state contains, is 
very considerable, and makes al¬ 
most seven-eighths thereof.— Mac - 
quer. 

The Indians destroy their deform¬ 
ed children. Their skins are very 
thick. They have no beards or hair, 
except on their heads, for they pluck 
it out as it appears with split sticks. 

The Esquimaux are but four feet 
high in the north of the American 
continent; while the Patagonians, 
in the south, are rather taller than 
Europeans, and an athletick race. 
The men are from five feet ten 
inches to six feet six inches; and 
measure four feet round the chest, 
and nearly as much round the pel¬ 
vis. 

Hair has been transplanted from 
one part of the body to another. 

Near-sighted persons are called 
myopes. Their eye is too convex. 

A concave glass corrects the de¬ 
fect; just as a convex glass enables 
us to see nearer by converging the 
rays. 

Among the mammalia, man only * 
has but one thumb. 

The atoms composing a man are 
believed to be changed every forty 
days, and even the bones in a few 
months. 

The pulse of children is 120 in a 
minute, at puberty eighty, and at 
sixty only sixty. 

Dr. Lamb infers from the teeth, 
stomach, and intestines of man, that 
his natural food is vegetables. Other 
anatomists have maintained the 
same opinion, and many philoso¬ 
phers, in all ages, have proved the 
advantages of vegetable diet in their 
continued good health and extraor¬ 
dinary longevity. Pope ascribes all 
the bad passions and diseases of the 
human race, to their subsisting on 
the flesh, blood, and miseries of ani¬ 
mals. Many thousands in England 
now live by choice on vegetables; 
while the Irish, Scotch, and most of 
the labouring classes do it from ne¬ 
cessity, and enjoy health and vigour, 
except when they indulge in spiritu¬ 
ous liquors. 

Dr. Lettsom ascribed health and 
wealth to water, and happiness to 
small beer, and all diseases and 







78 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


crimes to the use of spirits : making 
of the whole a moral thermometer. 
The Abbe Gallani ascribes all social 
crimes to animal destruction, thus 
treachery to angling, and ensnar¬ 
ing; and murder to hunting and 
shooting; and he asserts “that the 
man who would kill a sheep, an ox, 
or any unsuspecting animal, would 
kill his neighbour but for the law.” 

Boerhaave describes eight tempera¬ 
ments, the warm, cold, dry, moist, 
bilious,sanguinous, phlegmatick, and 
melancholick. The ancients divided 
men into the airy, the fiery, the phleg¬ 
matick, and the earthy; or the san¬ 
guinous, the cholerick, the moist, and 
the melancholick. Reece assigns se¬ 
ven constitutions as connected with 
disease: the sanguinous, or inflam¬ 
matory ; the phlegmatick, or relaxed; 
the erysipetalous, or nervous ; the 
hypochondriacal, orspasmodick; the 
scrofulous: the rheumatick; and the 
arthritick, or gouty. 

Reece in his excellent Medical 
Guide, enumerates 220 drugs in ge¬ 
neral use in the relief or cure of dis¬ 
eases. The chief part are derived 
from the vegetable kingdom ; and 
there are five preparations of steel, 
three or four of mercury, one of tin, 
two of sulphur, four of nitre, and 
twenty or thirty purely chymical, as 
quinine, morphine, iodine, prussick 
acid, &c. 

As the animal system does not ad¬ 
mit of two excitements at the same 
time, most morbid affections are re¬ 
lieved by new excitements and these 
abating, the disease abates, and is 
often cured. This is called sym¬ 
pathy, and the stomach and brain 
appear to be the common centres of 
it. 

The same medicines, says Reece, 
have contrary effects primarily and 
ultimately, and as applied to differ¬ 
ent functions of the system. Thus 
opium is at first stimulating, and 
then sedative. Cayenne and black 
pepper are inflammatory stimulants 
of the skin, but remove inflammation 
of the palate. Turpentine excites the 
skin, but operates as a sedative in 
puerperal fever, and on the kidneys. 
Digatalis diminishes the action of 
the heart and arteries, and increases 
that of the absorbents. So with 
others. 


Arsenick and acid solutions of mer¬ 
cury, copper, lead, antimony, &c. 
are active mineral poisons, for which 
sulphur and salt of wormwood, or 
charcoal, are the best antidotes next 
to the stomach syringe. 

Reece relates that a leech of 3 
drachms takes 3§ of blood, and as 
much more escapes after. Those of 
smaller size in less proportion; so 
that 24 large leeches take 17 ounces, 
and 24 small ones but three. 

Vinegar boiled with myrrh or cam¬ 
phor and sprinkled in a room, cor¬ 
rects putridity. Smyth’s plan was, to 
heat half a tea cup of vitriolick acid in 
a vessel of hot sand, and stir into it 
some powdered nitre, till the room is 
filled with nitrous vapour. The 
chlorurets of sodium and calcium 
have lately been adopted. 

The marks used in pharmacy for 
different weights are as under 


%'.a pound or pint. 

Bj .an ounce. 

Bss .half an ounce. 

3/.a drachm. 

3ss.half a drachm. 

'Sj .a scruple. 

.half a scruple. 

gr. j. .a grain. 


If for manhood a dose is a drachm; 
in youth it is half; at four it is fif¬ 
teen grains ; at one year five grains; 
at one month one grain. 

A tea spoonful is a drachm; a ta¬ 
ble spoonful half an ounce; a wine 
glass two ounces; a tea cup three 
ounces; a pint is a pound. A drop 
is a grain or minim ; and sixty are 
a drachm. In prescriptions, m stands 
for minim ; a, or ana, for, of each ; 
ss the half; cong. a gallon; and 
cochl. a spoonful. 

Drugs are weighed below a drachm 
in three scruples or sixty grains; 
but above a drachm by avoirdupois 
weight, and compounded by troy 
weight. Wine measure is also used. 


THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 

The twenty-four classes of Lin¬ 
naeus are called, according to the 
number of Stamens— 















THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


1. Monandria. 

2. Diandria. 

3. Triandria. 

4. Tetandria. 

5. Pentandria. 

6- Hexandria. 

7 Ileptandria. 

8. Octanclria. 

9. Enneaudna. 

10. Decandria. 

11. Dodecandria. 

12. Icosandria. 


13. Polyandria. 

14. Didynamia. 

15. Tetradinamia. 

16. Monadelphia. 

17. Diadelphia. 

18. Polyadelphia. 

19. Syngenesia. 

20. Gynandria. 

21. Monesia. 

22. Dioecia. 

23. Polygamia. 

24. Cryptogamia. 


The orders are as under, depending 
on the Pistils— 


1. Monogynia. 15. 

2. Dygyma. 16. 

3. Trigynia. 

4. Tetragynia. 17. 

5. Pentagynia. 

6. Hexagynia. 18. 

7. Octagynia. 19. 

8. Enneagyina. 20. 

9. Decagynia. 21. 

10. Dodecagynia. 22. 

11. Polygynia. 23. 

12. Gymnospermia.24. 

13. Angiospermia. 25. 

14. Siliculosa. 26. 


Siliquosa. 

Polygamia 

equalis. 

Polygamia 

segregata. 

Monogamia. 

Monoecia. 

Dioecia. 

Trioecia. 

Filices. 

Musci. 

Hepaticae. 

Algae. 

Fungi. 


The virtues of plants have always 
been an object of study. Plants are 
the first decomposers of minerals 
into their elements, and they also as¬ 
similate the constituents of air and 
water; and, therefore, are nature’s 
chymists. Pharmacy has in some 
degree superseded them ; but till 
within two or three hundred years, 
they were medicine as well as food. 
Their various virtues were seized on 
by superstition, and for many ages 
they were connected with the fancies 
of astrology. The day was divided 
into planetary hours; and no plant 
was believed to have its virtue, un¬ 
less gathered in the hour of itsplanet, 
and also at a particular age of the 
moon. 


Botany has always been a favour¬ 
ite study; however, as species and 
varieties are as numerous as the com¬ 
bination of the elements in various 
proportions, classification and no¬ 
menclature were at all times an ob¬ 
ject of solicitude. Many attempts, 
therefore, were made by different 
botanists, as by Caesalpinus, Mori- 
son, Rivinus, Ray, and Tournefort, 
who successively adopted most of 
the distinctions and terms still in 
use. 


But as these were not sufficiently 

comprehensive and discriminating. 
Linne, a Swede, or Linnaeus, as La¬ 
tinized, began about the year 1730, 
to adopt what is called the sexual 
system, in which he classed them ac¬ 
cording to the number and situation 
of the sexual parts, and made the 
flower and fruit his test of various 
genera. His first great work was a 
dictionary of 7300 plants, arranged 
in classes, orders, and genera, ac¬ 
cording to this mode of discrimina¬ 
tion, improving the old terminology, 
and giving the trivial of vulgar 
names. 

Van Royen, of Leyden, soon after 
promulgated another system; Gle- 
ditch another system, more simple; 
and Haller a third : but the system 
of Linnaeus soon prevailed through 
the civilized world. 

His only successful opponents 
were the Jussieus, who promulgated 
a natural system, found on the habits 
and affinities of plants; and this 
system is now generally adopted in 
France,and much respected through¬ 
out Europe and America. 

The terms in botany are very nu¬ 
merous and complicated, and, though 
generally expressed in Latin, they 
have clear English synonymes. 

25 terms are used in general de¬ 
scription. 

13 for state of vegetation. 

68 divisions of particular descrip¬ 
tions ; each subdivided into 400 dis¬ 
criminations, divided among the 68 
divisions. 

The anatomy and physiology of 
plants includes half as many more, 
and the classes and orders about 300 
more. 

Jussieu divides plants into three 
divisions: the acotyledons, when the 
seeds are destitute of lobes ; the mo¬ 
nocotyledons, with one lobe ; and 
the dicotyledons, with two lobes. 
The first includes what Linnaeus 
calls cryptogamia ; the second is di¬ 
vided into three classes, of four or¬ 
ders, eight orders, and four orders. 
The dicotyledons are divided into 
eleven classes, containing seventy- 
eight orders. 

The Linneean system consists of 
twenty-four classes, and twenty-s'x. 
orders, divided into 3000 genera; the 





80 THE VEGETAB LE KINGDOM ._ 

kernals; phosphorick in barley, oats, 


genera into 50 or 60000 species; and 

the species into an almost infinite 
number of varieties. The twenty- 
four classes depend on the number 
of stamens, and the orders on the 
number of pistils. 

Botanists record 56000 species of 
various plants; and 38000 are to be 
found in catalogues. 

The ultimate and proximate prin¬ 
ciples of all vegetation are oxygen, 
hydrogen, carbon, and occasionally 
nitrogen. The proximate principles 
depend on the proportion of those 
elements; as when the oxygen is in 
greater proportion than water, or less, 
or equal, or when there is nitrogen. 
This general division indicates acid 
vegetables, neutral vegetables, in¬ 
flammable vegetables, and animal 
product. The first, where the acids 
prevail, is the acetick acid, the ox- 
alick, citrick, tartarick, benzoick, 
camphorick, gallick, malick, sube- 
rick, succinick, mellitick, saclactick, 
fungick, and kinick. These acids 
confer an acidulous character on all 
vegetables with which they are com¬ 
bined. 

When the oxygen and hydrogen 
are combined in the same propor¬ 
tions as in water, the substance is 
not acidulous, but consists of sugar, 
gum, starch, wood, or lignin tannin, 
and what is called extractive. 

When there is an excess of hydro- 
en, then unctious and inflammable 
odies are generated, as^. fixed oil, 
volatile oil, resin, caoutchouck, cam¬ 
phor, and wax. In the division con¬ 
taining nitrogen is found vegetable 
gluten. 

Vegetables contain in substance, 
acids, sugar, gum, mucus, jelly, 
starch, gluten, and five or six pecu¬ 
liar principles, as tannin, indigo, the 
bitter and narcotick principle, &c. 
They also yield oils, wax, resins, &c. 
In all about thirty-four several pro¬ 
ducts. 

Vegetables yield nine several 
acids: the oxalick in rhubarb; the 
tartarick in tamarinds, grapes, and 
mulberries; the citrick in oranges 
lemons, and onions; the malick in 
apples, cherries, &c.; the gallick in 
elm, oak, &c.; the benzoick in bal- 
samick trees; the prussick in laurel 
leaves, peach blossoms, and bitter 


&c. 

Sugar consists of oxygen 51, car¬ 
bon 42, hydrogen 7. 

The sugar plant is called the sac- 
charum ojjicinarum. 

Vegetable substances are fibrous 
or saccharine, or mucilaginous, when 
their oxygen or hydrogen are in the 
same proportion as water. They are 
oily or resinous, or contain alcohol, 
when there is an excess of hydro¬ 
gen ; and they are acidulous when 
there is an excess of oxygen. 

The substance of fruit varies as it 
matures. Green apricots afford no 
sugar, but more adVanced .066, and 
when ripe .165. The woody fibre is 
.036, then .025 and .019; the propor¬ 
tion of water also is .89, .84, and .75. 

The process of germination chan¬ 
ges oxygen gas into carbonick acid, 
but does not affect the azotick por¬ 
tion of the atmosphere; it is sup¬ 
posed that the seed absorbs the oxy¬ 
gen, and gives out the carbon. 

The sap of vegetables consists 
chiefly of water, with a small portion 
of potass, some vegetable matter, 
and carbonate of lime. 

The evaporation of vegetables con¬ 
sists of water and minute portions 
of gummy matter, and carbonate 
and sulphate of lime. 

Vegetation converts the gas of the 
atmosphere into an equal bulk of 
carbonick acid gas, without affecting 
the azote. When no oxygen is 
present, they either form carbureted 
nitrogen or carbureted hydrogen, 
always evolving carbon. 

Light is unfavourable to the for¬ 
mation of saccharine matter in vege¬ 
tation. Their juices are alike, and 
they are not inflammable when they 
grow in the dark. Light produces 
the varieties of their qualities as well 
as their colours, becoming white in 
the dark.. 

Leaves are coloured in the pro¬ 
portion in which acids and alkalies 
prevail in them ; green indicates an 
excess of alkali. Solar light is the 
agent by which the carbonick acid in 

S ls is decomposed. The oxygen is 
us expelled, and the alkali produces 
green. 

All fruits consist, in various pro¬ 
portions, of water, sugar, potass, 





THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


inalick acid, mucilage, tannin, gela¬ 
tin, and a flavouring and colouring 
principle. The essentials in making 
wine from them are the sugar, tarta- 
rous acid, mucilage, and water. Fla¬ 
vour, colour, and tannin are not es¬ 
sential. The tartarous acid distin¬ 
guishes wine, and the malick, cider. 
The sugar, by fermentation, yields 
the alcohol, with extractive vegeta¬ 
ble matter. 

The colours of flowers depend on 
light: and the colouring matter 
which they yield becomes red when 
an acid is added to it, and violet, 
blue, or green, when an alkali is add¬ 
ed. Flowers decompose no carbon- 
ick acid, but they convert the oxy¬ 
gen in the air into carbonick acid. 

The odorous matter of flowers is 
inflammable, and arises from an es¬ 
sential oil. When growing in the 
dark their odour is diminished, but 
restored in the light; and it is 
strongest in sunny climates. 

The sap of plants is mucilaginous, 
albuminous, and saccharine, in the 
alburnum; and astringent, or tannin, 
in the bark. The cambium, between 
the wood and bark, is a mixture of 
both. 

A retention of the oxygen for want 
of light, renders plants white; and 
its excess produces the same effect. 

Fleshy leaves absorb oxygen in 
the night, and give it out in the sun¬ 
shine. They produce carbonick acid, 
and also decompose it; and, there¬ 
fore, do not vitiate the air. In a 
close vessel they deteriorate and re¬ 
store the air. 

Fruit put into an atmosphere that 
contains no oxygen, does not ripen; 
but the ripening process commences 
when oxygen is supplied. The total 
weight of fruit in ripening is very 
little diminished. Heat produces 
saccharine matter in fruits; and heat 
without light will mature them. 

A chestnut tree grew at Tam worth, 
which was fifty-two feet round; it 
was planted in the year 800; and in 
the reign of Stephen, in 1135, was 
made a boundary, and called the 
Great Chestnut Tree. In 1759 it bore 
nuts which produced young trees. 

In a pear shut in a close vessel 
for seventeen days, the ingredients 
were much changed: the sugar was 
doubled; and the gum, water and 


woody fibre, had decreased. 100 
parts of the air contained 13£ of car¬ 
bonick acid, 7i of oxygen, and 79 of 
azote. 

There are twenty-one species of 
the pine: among which the cedar is 
the largest, and the wild, or Scotch, 
the most important, producing yel¬ 
low deal, and trunks sixty or eighty 
feet high. The silver fir is not less 
valuable for its quick growth and 
vast size. The larch is another spe¬ 
cies of rapid growth. 

There are sixty species of the pep¬ 
per tree. 

There are 100 species of heaths, 
and four natives of this island. In the 
Highlands they are used in building, 
for beds, and for malt liquor. They 
die an orange colour, with a mordant 
of alum. 

There are 216 species of lichen : of 
which the orchall is purple or crim¬ 
son die; the omphalodes, paler, but 
more lasting; and islandicus , used 
as bread, and in medicine. 

Bamboo is, in the torrid zone, and 
in the East, a production of various 
most important uses,and grows from 
fifteen to sixty feet high, being from 
five to fifteen inches in diameter. It 
is well known by its hollowness and 
its joints; it grows rapidly, as much 
as twenty feet in a few weeks. It 
flourishes wild in many places; and 
in China, and other countries, is 
carefully cultivated in plantations. 
The soft shoots are cut and eaten 
like asparagus, and sometimes salt¬ 
ed, and ate with rice. The hollow 
joints afford a liquid, drank by the 
people; and if not drawn off, a con¬ 
crete medicinal substance is formed, 
and much valued. Decoctions of 
the leaves and bark are also pre¬ 
scribed. Its seeds are eaten as a 
delicacy; its large joints are used as 
buckets; and, in many countries, no 
other wood is used for building 
houses. Ships are framed out of it, 
and it furnishes masts and yards. 
Its leaves make fans. It is also 
used to make bows, and instead of 
lead pipes to convey water to great 
distances. It also forms writing 
pens, and is woven into baskets, 
cages, hats, &c.—bruised into pulp 
it makes fine paper; it is also used 
for every kind of furniture, and we 
imitate it in Europe by painting the 
knots of chairs and tables. 








82 


THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


The cotton plant or genus gossy- 
pium contains 10 species and is ex¬ 
tensively cultivated in warm cli¬ 
mates. It belongs to the class mo- 
nodelphia, and the order polyandria. 
The seeds are enclosed in a capsule 
and involved in the filaments called 
cotton. The plant is raised from 
seed sown in holes in the spring 
months. The superfluous plants are 
pulled up, and the others pruned to 
the height of four feet. There are 
annual plants, but the perennial spe¬ 
cies is cultivated in South America. 
The seed springs up in a few days 
in showery weather, and the cluster 
of plants is weeded when they are j 
a few inches high. The tops are 
pruned to increase the. branches. 
They yield in seven or eight months, 
and the crops improve for two or 
three years, and every four or five 
years the plants are renewed. The 
blossoms, a double calyx exteriorly, 
three cleft, appear in July and Au¬ 
gust, the pods opening in a few 
weeks, and the first crop being picked 
in November and December. The 
rainy season then produces a second 
crop, picked in March and April. 
The pods are then dried in the sun 
until the seed becomes hard, and the 
seed is then separated from the cot¬ 
ton by a gin. It is then picked and 
packed for market. Its great enemy 
is the caterpillar, called the che¬ 
nille. An acre of cotton trees, un¬ 
der favourable circumstances, yields 
400 lbs. of cotton. The pods are the 
size of apples, and filled with cotton, 
surrounding the seeds. 

Four only of the species of cotton 
or gossypium, are important to com¬ 
merce. The herbaceous is but two 
feet high, with capsules full of seeds 
wrapt in cotton wool. The hirsu- 
tum, same size, with hairy stalks 
and leaves, and American. The Bar- 
badoes four to five feet high. The 
cotton tree , perennial ana six or 
eight feet high. 

The mahogany tree is a native 
of Cuba, Jamaica, &c. and grows 
from 60 to 100 feet high, with deep 
green foliage, orange-coloured flow¬ 
ers, and fruit the size of a large 
egg- 

Cork, whose specifick gravity is 
240, or \ that of water, is the bark 
of a tree called guercus super , which 
flourishes in southern Europe, and 


northern Asia. It falls from the 
tree at 12 or 15 years old; but for 
commerce they are stript for several 
years successively and then allowed 
an interval of 2 or 3 years. The 
young trees are stript only every 
third year. It is flattened by being 
piled up in damp places, and loaded 
with weights, it is then dried over 
fires for use. As a bad conductor of 
heat it is used to increase the warmth 
of apartments, and as the lightest 
and most elastick of the woods no 
substance is more generally useful. 

The moms or mulberry tree has 
several species. The white, feeds 
silk worms in China, the leaves 
sheep, and the branches make fire¬ 
wood. The black produces the best 
fruit. The bark of the papyrifero 
species is employed in Japan to 
make paper, and it also makes fine 
white cloth. 

The cinnamon tree is a species of 
laurel, and is a native of Ceylon. 
It grows to 20 or 30 feet ana its 
trunk and branches produce the bark. 

Indian arrow root is a native plant 
of South America and cultivated in 
the West Indies. It is a creeping 
root, with stalks about two feet high, 
and the roots pounded and bleached 
make the starch which is used as 
nutricious food. It was supposed to 
be an antidote to the poison of In¬ 
dian arrows, and hence its odd name. 
Linnasus calls it maranta. 

The banian is the sacred tree of 
the Hindoos. Every branch shoots 
a new root to the ground, so that 
they spread indefinitely and afford 
shady retreats for comfort and re¬ 
ligion. 

The date in all tropical countries, 
is one of the most common trees, and 
grows from 50 to 100 feet, affording 
food, clothing, &c. 

The banana or plantain is the 
most useful of trees. Its fruit 12 
inches long and two thick, serves 
for bread; the leaves serve for 
cloth and covering; the root is pe¬ 
rennial, but the stalk is annual, and 
grows to 15 or 20 feet. 

The chinchona tree which pro¬ 
duces the Peruvian bark flourishes 
chiefly in the elevated plains of 
Quito. 

Cassada roots are made into bread 






THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


in Brazil, and its starch is what we 
call tapioca. 

Sarsaparilla is the root of a Peru¬ 
vian plant called smilax. Sassafras 
is the wood of a tree of the laurel 
kind. 

The great palm or date tree grows 
in Africa to tne height of 60, 80, and 
100 feet. 

Botanists infer that plants are 
poisonous when the fruit is a berry,. 
the flower a single petal, and wdien 
the fructification consists of five 
stamens and one pistillum. 

The nux vomica, or poison nut, 
imported in large quantities (as well 
as opium and coculus indicus) for 
brewers, is grown on the coast of 
Coromandel. 

The belladona or deadly night 
shade produces berries like black 
cherries, which often poison chil¬ 
dren and cattle. 

The potato and yam of the In¬ 
dians is the arum cupanolatum, the 
roots of which are 5 or 6 lbs. 

Nutmegs are the kernel of a fruit 
like the peach, and when its pulpy 
covering is removed, is surrounded 
by a coat of mace. 

The tcha or tea tree flourishes 
best in a light soil; it is raised from 
seeds sown in spring and trans¬ 
planted in rows three or four feet 
asunder. After three years the leaves 
are plucked, and the plants yield 
three year’s crops and are then re¬ 
newed. They resemble myrtles, and 
their flowers are like the wild white 
rose. In some provinces they grow 
six or seven feet high, and in others 
ten or twelve. They are often made 
use of for hedge row r s, and the leaves 
gathered for domestick use. The 
leaves at the extremities are the best, 
and in spring of bright green. 
When gathered they are first steamed 
and then placed on copper, iron, or 
earthen plates over fires, by which 
they are shrivelled and curled up. 
The black teas are then exposed to the 
sun. The leaves of some other shrubs 
are so like that, they are often frau¬ 
dulently mixed. The common sorts 
are sold in China at Ad. a pound and 
the superiourat 2s. The additions in 
foreign countries arise from freight, 
profit, and government duties, and 
the profit of the Chinese merchants 


_83 

is from 25 to 50 per cent. The du¬ 
ties in England are cent, percent, on 
the price at the company’s sales. 
The English East India Company 
import above 30 millions of lbs. 

Black teas are grown chiefly in 
the province of Fo-kien. The Chi¬ 
nese prefer it to green tea as a better 
stomachickj the commonest sort 
is called bouy or bohea. Con¬ 
gou or convfoo is a finer kind sold 
at double tne price. Saot-chong or 
souchong is the best kind, and sold 
at treble. Pekao is another supe- 
riour kind, but milder. The tender 
leaves of young plants are called 
mastcha or tea for the emperour. 

Green teas are chiefly produced 
in the province of Kianguan; the 
difference is believed to arise from 
the black being dried on iron plates 
and the green on copperplates. The 
songlo green teas are so called from 
a mountain of that name, on and 
around which the shrubs grow. 
Haysuen or hyson is sold at double 
the sanglo. Tchu-tcha or gunpowder 
tea is rolled up by the hand and sold 
at treble the sanglo. The Chinese 
keep tea a year; generally in those 
jars which in Europe are used as 
chimney ornaments. They infuse 
it in boiling water and drink it with¬ 
out milk or sugar. They frequently 
reduce it to fine powder, and put. a 
tea-spoonful into a cup, fill it w'ith 
boiling water, stir it, and drink it. 
The Japanese cultivate this shrub as 
well as the Chinese. 

Tea was first introduced about 1660, 
and sold at 60s. per lb., and hence 
coveted as a luxury. 30 millions of 
lbs. are now used in the United King¬ 
dom. 

About four millions of lbs. or one 
fifth of sloe, liquorice, and ash leaves, 
are alleged to be annually mixed with 
tea before it is sold to retailers. 

The freight of tea from China is 
equal to Ad. per lb. Tea shrubs only 
bear once in two or three years. 

The allspice or pimento is 30 feet 
high and eight or nine inches in dia¬ 
meter. 

The average crop of an orange tree 
is from 6 to 8000. 00000 boxes are 

imported per annum. 

The clove tree grows 40 or 50 feet, 
bears at 20 and continues till 50; they 
yield from 5 to 30 lbs. per annum. 






84 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


This spice is cultivated chiefly at Am- 
boyna and three adjacent islands. 
When possessed by the English the 
islands yielded about 120000 lbs. per 
annum, which sold for 20000Z. The 
same mercenary despotism on the 
part of the Dutch prevails here as at 
Banda. 

Opium is the hardened juice of the 
white poppy and is an article used in 
Mahomedan countries as a substi¬ 
tute for prohibited wine and spirits, 
and in England by public brewers 
to give an intoxicating character to 
their deleterious compounds. The 
consumption, in consequence, is 
enormous, from 50 to 60000 lbs. being 
consumed in this country per an¬ 
num. Its price is about 15 or 16s. 
per lb. Superiour opium is also grown 
in England. 

The narco tick or stupifying vege¬ 
table principle is made from white 
poppy, as opium, laudanum, &c. and 
also made from the milky juice of 
lettuce, &c. 

The betel or pawn, chewed in the 
East by both sexes, like tobacco, 
consists of the fruit of the areca palm 
wrapt in leaves of the betel pep¬ 
per plant. The fruit grows in clus¬ 
ters, of a reddish colour, and the betel 
pepper is a species of vine with an 
ivy leaf; both are cultivated to an 
immense extent all over India. 

Lime is used with the betel nut 
called chunan , and is prepared from 
calcined shells. This prevents any 
injury to the stomach. The chew¬ 
ing reddens the saliva and turns the 
teeth black, but it creates appetite 
and strengthens the stomach. Wo¬ 
men chew it constantly, and the 
Singalese sleep with it in their 
mouths. It is the snuff and tobacco 
of the Hindoos. The quantity im¬ 
ported in some of the British settle¬ 
ments is from 1 to 200C00Z. per an¬ 
num. Many Hindoos would rather 
want food than the betel. 

The sugar cane succeeds in Louisi¬ 
ana and yields half the sugar used in 
the Union ; an acre producing 9 or 
10 cwt. Rice is also a productive 
crop, an acre, in moist situations, 
yielding 10 or 12 cwt., and in others 
5 to 10. Indian corn yields from 40 
to 100 bushels per acre, and wheat 
from 22 to 50. Tobacco about 1400 


cwt. and Cotton when prepared for 
the market, from 1£ to 2 cwt. 

Quercitron is the inner bark ot 
the Quercus Niger or oak, and it 
produces yellow die. Oak saw-dust 
produces drabs and shades of brown. 
Oak apples are a substitute for galls. 

Catachusa, a substance much used 
by tanners, is a hardened vegetable 
juice or sort of essence of the tan¬ 
ning principle. In analyses, 200 
grains are found to contain 100 of 
tannin, 70 of a peculiar extract, 15 of 
mucilage, and 15 of earthy matter. 

The teasel, used in raising the nap 
in woollen cloths is the flower of 
the dipsacusfullonum , cultivated in 
clothing districts. They are fixed 
on a cylinder revolved against the 
cloth. 

Turners make bowls from syca¬ 
more wood. Another species is used 
for hop-poles. And 25 gallons of the 
sap of American acer yields 5 lbs of 
maple sugar. 

One peck of seed wheat produces 
an average crop of two bushels; but 
by separating and transplanting the 
roots of a single grain of wheat 500- 
000 grs. have been produced. France, 
Poland, &c. produce 5 or 6 to 1, 
and fertile parts of France 15 to 1. 
In South America, from 12 to 24 to 
one. 

Two bushels of seed in England, 
produce 18 of wheat, 4 of barley, and 
of potatoes 190 bushels in fair crops. 

Black pepper is the powder of the 
fruit, which grows in clusters. 
White is prepared from it. Long 
pepperis another species of dried fruit 
of the pepper tree. 

The heart of the aloes tree sells in 
India for its weight in gold, under 
the name of tamback. 

Under fair management in Ireland, 
spade-squares of potatoes weigh 191b. 
per spade, or 103 barrels per acre, 
each barrel 252 lbs. or 36000 lbs. to 
the acre, or 100 lbs. per day on an 
acre. 

285 tons 11 cwt. of turnips were a 
single crop of turnips on an Irish 
acre in 1829. 

The woods which are heavier than 
water are Dutch box, Indian cedar, 
ebony, lignum vitae, mahogany, 
heart of oak, pomegranate, vine. 
Lignum vitae, is one-third heavier, 






65 


THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


pomegranate rather more. Cork 
one fourth of a pound or 0.24, poplar 
0.383, are the lightest woods. 

Grew and Malpighi have given the 
following account of the structure of 
the apricot and pear, which may 
serve for other fruit. In the apricot 
there is a pulpy part, an osseous part, 
and in the centre the kernel; and 
the pulp and the stone or osseous 
part, consist of cellular tissue. The 
seed is connected with the stone by 
an umbilical cord. Within the ovu- 
lum is an inner tunick filled with celu- 
lar tissue, and a small tube, the apex 
of which is the embryo, which when 
about the fifth of a cheese mite in 
size, may be distinguished in its 
parts. The pulp of the pear is made 
up of very fine cellular tissue, every 
where furnished with vessels. In the 
centre are five cells, each containing 
two seeds, severally attached by an 
umbilical cord. Throughout the pul¬ 
py matter, solid particles are dispers¬ 
ed chiefly about the core, and they 
serve as centres to little knots of ves¬ 
sels, of which there are fifteen princi¬ 
pal ones and ten of them connected 
with the seeds. These subjects are 
only to be understood by ocular ex¬ 
amination with a moderate micro¬ 
scope, for even the best engravings 
convey very inadequate notions. 

The wood of trees is annually form¬ 
ed by a single ring of vessels which 
at first surround the pith, and in each 
following year a new ring of vessels 
is formed around the preceding; so 
that the timber consists of a senes of 
annual rings, enclosed in each other. 
The outer one being whiter and more 
juicy, and therefore called sap wood, 
or alburnum. 

The seeds of plants are their eggs. 
A sun flower produces 4000; a poppy 
30000, a tobacco plant 3 or 400000 ; 
and spleen worth a million. Some, 
as the sea pink, have but one seed, 
umbelliferous flowers two, and the 
spurge and ranunculus three. 

The anthers of flowers have nine 
several forms, and they contain the 
fecundating dust which impregnates 
the germ ; they have one or more 
cells and stand on one or more filia- 
ments. 

The leaves of the mimosa genus 
collapse either by touch, by night, or 
by cold; and those of the foot stalk 


are the most sensitive to touch. The 
species scandens, spreads to a vast 
extent from tree to tree, and has pods 
eight feet long. 

The late experiments of Dutrochet 
lead him to conclude that the mi¬ 
mosa jmdica possesses the elements 
of a nervous system. He believes 
that all the motions are spontaneous 
and depend on an internal principle, 
which receives impressions from ex¬ 
ternal agents. 

The fibrous tissue of silk is said to 
be visible in the white mulberry, on 
which the worms feed. 

Wheat and barley grow more in 
the day than night, and more rapid¬ 
ly from eight in the morning till two 
o’clock. 

Fir contracts in width one 124th, 
and oak one 140th, by changes in the 
atmosphere. 

Fairy rings are ascribed to ex¬ 
panding fungi, which in a circle of 
enlarged dimensions exhaust them¬ 
selves. 

Hops entwine to the left and con¬ 
volvulus to the right. Tendrils bend 
to the left and back again. 

The flower is the part of fructifica¬ 
tion in plants, and contains, and pro- 
i tects, and ornaments the stamens 
and pistils. 

The seeds of plants consist of three 
parts : the cotytedon or side lobes, 
the radicle, and the plumula. The 
radicle is the germ of the root, and 
the plumula the stem of the plant. 
And germination depends on heat, 
moisture, air, and rest. 

Deciduous trees are those whose 
leaves fall off every year, as opposed 
to evergreens. 

The hedysarum gyrans, according 
to Linnaeus, possesses in its leaves 
and petioles the power of locomo¬ 
tion, seldom being quiescent; the 
different leaves au over the plant 
moving variously up and down, 
round about, &c. without any exter¬ 
nal cause whatever. 

All plants require a definite degree 
of heat; and, therefore their growth 
and heat are mutual tests. The 
plantain requires from 82° to 73°; 
and, therefore, will not grow beyond 
the 27th degree of latitude, or higher 







86 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


than 1068 yards ; or lOOOtoises. The 
sugar cane 82° to 73°, or within lati¬ 
tude 36, or the height of 900 toises. 
The cotton plant from Q2° to 68°, 
and latitude 34. The olive requires 
from 66° to 58°, from lat. 36 to 44. 
The vine requires heat from 62° to 
48° and the winter not below 33°. 
Wheat flourishes at a mean heat of 
55°, but when so low as 46°, neither 
wheat nor barley, nor oats nor rye, 
come to maturity. 

The first green incrustation on 
rocks and walls, called bissus, spe¬ 
cies of mosses, leaves a thin stratum 
of earth for a second crop; and in 
fine, for wall plants. 

Lichens and mosses are the first 
vegetables that grow on rocks; and 
in long time they create soil for 
others by their remains. 

Roses came to us from Persia, and 
into Persia from India. They abound 
in the countries round the Caspian. 

The lotus of the Egyptians is a 
species of nymphaea, or water lily 
with a flower like a tulip, white or 
blue. The roots of the white are 
eaten like potatoes. 

The flower of the khubut, of Su¬ 
matra, a mere parasite of climbers, 
is in breadth three feet; its petals 
twelve inches; its nectarium would 
hold six quarts; and its pistils are 
like cow’s horns. It appears as a 
knob, and expands for three months. 

The potato was a native of Chili. 

The metallick poisons and mephi- 
tick gases which kill animals, also 
kill vegetables.^ 

The people of Kebba were employ¬ 
ed in collecting the fruit of shea 
trees, from which they prepare the 
vegetable butter. These trees grow 
naturally in the woods, and in very 
great abundance; they resemble the 
American oak, and the fruit, from 
which the butter is prepared, is not 
unlike a Spanish olive. The kernel 
is enveloped in a sweet pulp, under 
a thin green rind; and the butter 
produced from it, besides the advan¬ 
tage of its keeping the whole year 
without salt, is whiter and firmer, 
and to my palate, of a richer taste 
than any butter I ever ate made 
from cow’s milk.— Park's Travels. 

The cocoa tree supplies the Indi¬ 
ans with almost whatever they stand 
in need of; as bread, water, wine, 


vinegar, brandy, milk, oil, honey, 
sugar, needles, clothes, thread, cups, 
spoons, basins, baskets, paper, 
masts for ships, sails, cordage, nails, 
covering for their houses, &c. Ray. 

The basins made of the leaves 
of the wild pine will hold a pint and 
a half or a quart of water; and when 
they find these pines, they stick 
their knives in the basis just at the 
roots, and that lets out the water, 
which they catch in their hats, as I 
have done many times myself. 

Dampier. 

Onions can never be sufficiently 
recommended; they possess more 
nourishment than perhaps any other 
vegetable. It is a well known fact, 
that a Highlander wdth a few raw 
onions in his pocket, and a crust of 
bread or a bit of cake, can work or 
travel to an almost incredible extent, 
for two or three days together, with¬ 
out any other food. The French are 
aware of this: the soup de l’onion is 
now universally in use after all vio¬ 
lent exertions, as the best of all res¬ 
toratives. Whoever has tasted on¬ 
ions in Egypt must allow that none 
can be had better in any part of the 
world; here they are sweet, in other 
countries they are nauseous and 
strong, whereas in the north, and 
other parts, they are hard of diges¬ 
tion : hence, they cannot in any 
place be eaten with more satisfaction 
or less prejudice than in Egypt. 
They eat them roasted; also made 
into a soup, which I think one of 
the best dishes I ever eat. 

Ilassilquist. 

A large onion planted so near a 
rose-bush as to touch its roots, will 
greatly increase the odour of its flow¬ 
ers; and the water distilled from 
such roses is far superior in flavour 
to other rose-water. 

Turnips were introduced in to Eng¬ 
land from Hanover, in the reign of 
George I., by Viscount Townsend. 

In 1816 a plantation of 3000 tea- 
trees was made in Brazil. 

The fig-tree was introduced about 


1548 

The flowering ash.1710 

Lavender.1568 

Different mulberries, 1548, 1596, 1629 

The Larch.1629 

Common laurel.1629 

Weeping willow.1692 

Laurestma.1596 











THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


87 


Barley, in rainy years, degenerates 
into oats; and oats, in dry seasons, 
change into barley. These facts, re¬ 
lated by Pliny, Galen, and Mathiola, 
have been confirmed by the experi¬ 
ments of naturalists. St. Pierre. 

Tobacco was the aboriginal name 
in St. Domingo; and, with slight va¬ 
riations, is adopted in every Euro¬ 
pean language. 

The Brazilian name of tobacco is 
petum. Its Linnaean name is nico- 
tiana y and there are seven species. 
It would flourish in England, but for 
the fiscal laws. 

Dry reeds, twenty feet high, cover 
tracts of hundreds of square miles in 
the Burmean territory. 

An elm is full grown in 150 years, 
and it lives 5 or 600. Ash is full 
grown in 100, and oak in 200. 

A log of mahogany has been 
brought to England weighing 6§ 
tons. 

The quantity of seed used in dib¬ 
bling is from H to 2 bushels per acre; 
by broad cast it is 2£ bushels per acre. 

Ivy does not kill trees, nor does it 
grow from their bark. 

A sitting room, twelve feet in dia¬ 
meter, was lately shown in London, 
hollowed from an American walnut 
tree, eighty feet in the trunk, and 150 
feet in the branches. 

A chestnut tree on Etna, is 196 feet 
round close to the ground; and five 
of its branches resemble great trees. 

The Damary oak, near Brentwood, 
was sixty-eight feet round, and se¬ 
venteen feet above the ground was 
twelve feet in diameter. 

- In the West Indies, the negroes 
prefer their own preparations of the 
plantain fruit to bread; and hence 
the bread-fruit tree, transported at 
such an expense from the South Sea 
islands, has been attended with no 
success in the colonies. Young. 

In England, the following is the 
order in which plants display flowers 
in spring:— 

The furze. 

The daisy. 

The groundsel. 

The hellebore. 

The snow-drop. 

The crocus. 

The mezereon. 


In January the black hellebore 
and sweet colt’s-foot are in flower. 
In February the crocus, the snow¬ 
drop, the polyanthus, and the hepa- 
tica and daisy. In March , the early 
violet, the primrose, the daffodil, the 
pile-wort, and the red-dead-nettle. 
In April, the cowslip, the crowfoot, 
the harebell, the lady's smock, the 
woodanemone, the dandelion, wood 
sorrel, and the wild yellow tulip. 

Field plants flower as under on the 
average of seasons:— 

In January , groundsel, chickweed, 
hazel, maiden hair, hart’s tongue. 

In February , shepherd’s purse, 
daisy, lungwort. 

In March , green hellebore, golden 
saxifrage, fumitory,'speedwell, violet, 
heart’s ease, lady’s smock. 

In April , ground ivy, dandelion, 
stitchwort, black thorn, buttercup, 
crowfoot, harebell, bugle, and globe 
flower. 

From this time till autumn all ve¬ 
getation flowers; but in October, 
November, and December, only the 
mosses and yew trees; but many 
flowers blow till Christmas. 

Apples ripen in the following or¬ 
der: the codlin, the margaret, the 
pearmain, the golden rennette, the 
russet, the nonpareil, the golden pip¬ 
pin. Those used for cider are the red- 
streak, the royal wilding, whitesour, 
the underleaf, the John, the hanger, 
and the gennet. 

Culmiferous plants are wheat, tri- 
ticum, which grows best on a stiff 
or clay soil. Rve, secalc, grows best 
in a chalky soil. Barley, hordeum , 
which requires a mellow soil, rather 
light. Oats, arena , which succeeds 
in the poorest soils. 

Leguminous plants are potatoes, 
solanum tuberosum , planted in April. 
Turnips, brassica rapa, sown in 
June. Pease, pisum, sown in Febru¬ 
ary. Beans, vicia fabia , sown in 
February. Carrots, daucas, sown in 
April. Parsnips, pastinaca , in au¬ 
tumn. Cabbages, brassica oleracea , 
in March or April. Burnet, poterium , 
sown in March. Beet, beta , sown in 
March. 

Herbaceous plants are flax, linum , 
used for linen and oil, grows on a 
deep sandy loam. Hemp, cannabis. 
Rape, or cole-seed, brassica napus. 









88 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 


Woad, isatis, used in dying. Hops, 
humulus , used in malt liquor. 

Alkanet root is used to colour lip¬ 
salve. 

Orris, or iris root, is imported from 
the Levant. 

Rhodium is the scented wood of 
the Chinese rose tree. Yellow Saun¬ 
ders is another eastern scented wood. 
Cassia-lignum is a scented bark 
from Ceylon. Cinnamon bark is 
well known for its fine scent. Clove 
bark is another of these scented ve¬ 
getables. 

S to rax is a fine flavoured gum used 
in honey-water, &c.; gum Benja¬ 
min is another gum, labdanum ano¬ 
ther; also gum myrrh, dragon’s 
blood, assafoetida, gum Arabick, and 
tragacanth : all from the east. The 
balsams of Peru and Tolu are liquid 
gums. 

Otto of roses is the oil which swims 
at top in the distillation of rose water. 

Sarsaparilla is a valuable altera¬ 
tive. 

Peruvian and eascarilla bark, and 
chamomile flowers, are powerful to- 
nicks. 

The aromaticks in general use are 
cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, orange 
and lemon peel, pepper, peppermint, 
spearmint, ginger, cardomon, anise, 
caraway, coriander, and dill and 
cumin seeds. 

Rhubarb, jalap, pulp of cassia, bit¬ 
ter apple, aloes, senna, henbane, fox 
glove, and oil of croton seeds, and 
castor seeds &c. are used as cathar- 
ticks. Saffron is used as a cordial. 

Decoctions of marsh-mallow root, 
sarsaparilla, barley water, oatmeal, 
and grit gruel, are used as demul¬ 
cents. 

Sudorificksa re guaiack gum, eon- 
tray erv a root, ana ipecacuanha. 

Vegetable diureticks are squills, 
fox-glove, dandelion, wild carrot 
seeds, parsley root, buchu leaves, &c. 

The senatives are opium, night¬ 
shade, lettuces, poppy heads, colchi- 
cum, henbane, hemlock, stramo¬ 
nium, and tobacco. 

The stimulants are the aromaticks, 
mustard seed, euphorbium, and fox¬ 
glove for the kidneys, and ergot of 
rye for the uterus. 

Snuff-taking in England took its 


rise from the capture of vast quan¬ 
tities of the article in Sir George 
Rooke’s expedition to Spain, in 1702. 
The prize of the forces was sold in 
England, and gave rise to a habit 
now general, and which yields a 
million a year to the revenue. It is 
useful only to those disposed to apo¬ 
plexy, increasing the secretions, and 
acting like a seton. There are above 
120 several sorts in some of the Lon¬ 
don shops, as at Taylor’s, in Fleet 
Street, &c., consisting of tobacco 
powder, with various admixtures, 
scents, &c. 

Cudbear is a vegetable substance 
which grows on rocks, and used in 
dying purple. 

Balsam of Peru is a decoction from 
the plant perviferum, which grows 
in Africa and Peru. 

Salop is made from the root of the 
orchis, or fool-stone, a favourite food 
in eastern countries. 

An oak tree in three years grows 
2 feet 10 h inches. A arch 3 feet 7£ 
inches. An elm 8 feet 3 inches. A 
beech one foot eight inches. A pop¬ 
lar six feet. A willow nine feet three 
inches. 

The pimento or allspice is a spe¬ 
cies of myrtle in the West Indies, 
which grows thirty feet high. 

Plants are mature for propagation 
as they are ill nourished. 

Terra japonica is the produce of 
the mimosa catechu. 

Liquorice is the extract of the 
juice of a root cultivated at Ponte¬ 
fract, where it is made into pectoral 
cakes, and also in Spain and the Le¬ 
vant, and made into cakes, much 
used by brewers and in pharmacy. 

Gall nuts are protuberances on 
trees created by the puncture of in¬ 
sects, and gallick acid is made from 
those on the oak. 

Gamboge is a concrete vegetable 
juice, and produced from two trees 
called caracapulli , which grows in 
Cambodja. 

The dendrometer is an instrument 
for taking the exact contents of 
standing trees, boughs, &c. 

A similitude has been established 
between feathers and vegetable 
prickles. 




Potatoes afford one-sixth of dry 
starch. 

Pounce is gum sandarach pounded 
fine. 

Raisins are perfectly ripe grapes, 
dried in the sun, or in ovens. 

Bird lime is prepared from the ber¬ 
ries of the mistletoe and the middle 
bark of the holly; it is boiled till it 
becomes soft. 

Mouldiness is a minute vegetation 
of perfect plants, flowers, &c. of the 
fungi genus. Dry rot is a variety of 
mouldmess. 

The capsule of the white poppy 
contains 8000 seeds. 

Mum is a German liquor made 
from malt. 

Molasses is the sirup of the cane, 
which does not crystallize, corres¬ 
ponding with the water of crystal¬ 
lization. 

Farina or meal is made from grain, 
and its nutriment depends on the 
starch which it contains. 

Mace is the second coat of the ker¬ 
nel of the nutmeg. 

Manna is a natural product of the 
ash and larch, and it exudes from 
those trees in Sicily and Calabria. 

Myrrh is a gum resin brought from 
the Levant and India. 

Pitch is inspissated tar, drawn 
chiefly from pines and from ruins of 
their ancient forests, in the coal dis¬ 
tilled from gas. 

Soy is made from the beans of the 
dolichos so/a, a native of Japan, 
pickled ana fermented with salt. 

The disease in rye, called spur or 
ergot, affords a black powder, useful 
in quickening parturition. 

The round leaf cornel, has been 
found useful as a tonick: and the lo¬ 
belia inflatain asthma. 

Tincture of chirayita is used as a 
stomachick; and the essence of 
buchu leaves for diseases of thq blad¬ 
der. 

The charcoal of the areca nut 
makes a valuable tooth powder. 

Extract of lettuce is used to arrest 
coughs, and as an efficient sedative. 

Musk seed is used as a tincture to 
cure nervous affections. 

Colchicum smoked relieves asth- 

H 2 


_89 

ma, and as a tincture, relieves rheu¬ 
matism. 

Hedge hyssop, with honey and 
vinegar, relieves pulmonary affec¬ 
tions. 

Belladona is a powerful narcotiek. 

Rhatany root is used as a tonick, 
and also as tooth powder. 

Snuff made from asarabaca, re¬ 
lieves the head and strengthens the 
sight. 

Oil of walnuts and walnut soap 
are specificks for the removal of pim¬ 
ples and cutaneous blotches. 

The sugar cane is a tall reed. The 
soft parts are eaten by the negroes, 
and from the hard parts the juices 
are expressed, which by boiling and 
evaporation crystallize as sugar. 

Chocolate is the solid oil of the 
cocoa nut. 

Gum is pure mucilage, and the 
juices which when matured are 
sweet, oily, and farinaceous, were 
originally mucilaginous. 

Lichen or liver-wort yields mucil¬ 
age, and makes a strong jelly when 
boiled in water or milk. 


MINERALS, METALS, AND 
CRYSTALS. 

Werner divides the primitive rocks 
as under 

1. Granite. 

2. Gneiss. 

3. Mica slate. 

4. Clay slate. 

5. Primitive limestone. 

6. Primitive trap. 

7. Serpentine. 

8. Porphyry. 

9. Transition Sienite. 

10. Topaz rock. 

11. Quartz rock. 

12. Primitive flinty slate. 

13. Primitive gypsum. 

14. White stone. 

15. Clay porphyry. 

16. Pearl stone do. 

17. Obsidian do. 

18. Transition Sienite. 

19. Pitch stone. 

The transition rocks are— 

1. Transition lime stone. 

2. Transition trap. 

3. Gneiss-wacke. 

4. Flinty slate. 


MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 






90 


MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


Werner teaches that the constitu¬ 

ent materials of the primitive rocks 
formed originally a chymical com¬ 
post, which deposited the primitive 
crystallized rocks in a solid state, 
previous to the formation of vege¬ 
tables or animals. In the strata 
which lie on these, their fragments 
with shells, &c. are found : and these 
he calls the transition rocks. On 
these lie the floetz, or secondary 
rocks. Older and other systems than 
Werner’s had not the advantage of 
his experience and general science. 

Rocks consist of substances differ¬ 
ently put together; as bv chymical 
crystallization, considered as natural 
formation, and therefore primitive, 
As quartz, felspar, mica, and horn¬ 
blende, which make up granite, 
gneiss, sienite, serpentine, porphyry, 
&c. of eight kinds. The rest are 
mechanical deposites, formed by the 
action or solution of water; then 
there are a class of rocks made up 
cf both these deposites and called 
transition rocks, which contain the 
earliest simple petrifactions. The 
rocks entirely mechanical, consist 
of sandstones, limestones, gypsum, 
chalk, iron, stone, &c. and are call¬ 
ed secondary. 

Werner thinks the quantity of 
water on the earth was once greater 
than at present. He infers that 
transition and secondary rocks are 
newer than primitive, because the 
latter basset or appear at the surface 
only in elevated spots, and the other 
successively in lower situations. 
The primitive are chymical forma¬ 
tions of silica, alumina, and mag¬ 
nesia, and are of 19 kinds. The 
transition are of four or five kinds, 
and partly chymical, partly me¬ 
chanical, with petrifactions of Zoo- 
phites. I n the secondary above these, 
he enumerates twelve kinds, abound¬ 
ing in vegetable and animal petri¬ 
factions. The upper strata, formed 
by water from the rains, and abrad¬ 
ings of these, are called alluvial. 

The substances which compose 
granite, are felspar, quartz, and mica. 
The quartz is gray, and generally 
transparent, forming the grains of 
sand. Felspar is of vitrified charac¬ 
ter but of different colours, and 
when broken down forms the basis 
of clay. Mica is a dark gray, often 
decomposed by the atmosphere, and 


when worn down, it mixes with the 
clay of the felspar and the sand of 
the quartz. Various proportions and 
circumstances render them the bases 
of the secondary rocks which appear 
to be their ruins, and to fill up large 
original hollows, valleys, or cavities 
in them. 

All minerals are earthy, saline, 
inflammable, or bad conductors of 
heat, and metallick, or heavy and 
coloured. 

There are in minerals eight shades 
of white, nine of gray, six of black, 
five of blue, twelve of green and yel¬ 
low, fifteen of red, and eight of 
brown; besides clear, dark, light or 
pale of those shades. 

Minerals are compaet solids, fria¬ 
ble or crumbly; or fluid, as mercury 
or rock oil or tar. Their qualities 
are—1, Hardness ; 2, Tenacity ; 3, 
Frangibility; 4, Flexibility; 5, Ad¬ 
hesion; 6,Unctuosity; 7,Coldness; 
and 8, Density. 

The first class, or earthy minerals, 
include eight genera; as diamond, 
zircon, flint, clay, talc, calc, barytes, 
and strontian. Of flint there are 
thirty-four species, of clay thirty- 
two, and of calc twenty. 

The second class, or saline mine¬ 
rals, consist of only one genus, with 
ten or twelve species, as natron, ni¬ 
tre, rock salt, alum, &c. 

The third, or inflammable class, in¬ 
cludes five genera, as sulphur, bitu¬ 
mens, graphite, charcoal, and resin. 

The fourth, or metallick class, in¬ 
cludes twenty-one genera, as platina, 
gold, mercury, silver, copper, iron, 
lead, tin, bismuth, zinc, antimony, 
cobalt, nickel, manganese, molyb- 
dena, arsenick, &c. &c. Of copper 
there are seventeen species, of iron 
fourteen, and lead ten. 

All substances on the earth, not of 
the class of neutral earths, are either' 
acids, or alkalies, or combustibles, 
solid, fluid, or gaseous. 

The Neptunian or Wernerian the¬ 
ory teaches that all the terrestrial 
formations arise from water; while 
the Plutonick theory ascribes the 
whole to fire. Perhaps both may be 
partly true; water as a constant, and 
fire as an occasional cause. But if 
combustion is the sole cause of wa¬ 
ter, then the Plutonists claim pri¬ 
ority. 






MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 91 


Mineralogical maps have been con¬ 

trived by Humboldt; in which lime¬ 
stone is represented by straight lines, 
salt by straight declining lines, por¬ 
phyry by waved lines, and granite 
by irregular points. 

Granite lies under all other rocks; 
and when it forms high mountains, 
the other rocks and strata are piled 
against it, so that it is constantly the 
undermost. 

Immediately above granite lies 
gneiss, or granite in strata; then 
mica-slate, and above that clay- 
slate ; and mingled with these last 
is primary limestone, trap, and ser¬ 
pentine. These primary rocks con¬ 
sist of crystals. 

Secondary rocks, consisting of 
gray-wacke and sandstone, appear 
to be depositions, and lie more hori¬ 
zontally; and in mountains of pri¬ 
mary formation they terminate at 
lower levels. Gneiss itself is consi¬ 
dered as debris of granite, which has 
settled on the granite, and the slates 
upon it, and less inclined. 

The newer secondary rocks lying 
more horizontally on the older, are 
at lower levels; so that the older 
rocks basset, or display their edges 
higher and higher on the sides of a 
granite mountain. 

Sienite is a middle rock between 
granite and porphyry, composed of 
felspar and hornblende, or quartz 
and black mica. 

When large crystals of felspar ap¬ 
pear in granites, they are called por- 
phyritick. In Cornish granites, the 
felspar is white. In the Scotch, red¬ 
dish brown. 

Silica, the substance of sand, sand¬ 
stone, flint, granite, quartz, &c. has 
a specifick gravity of 2.66. It has 
been imagined to consist of oxygen 
and a metallick base. 

There are five species of quartz: 
amethyst, rock crystal, milk quartz, 
common quartz, and praise. 

Felspar is composed of lamina or 
plates. Its constituents are silex 
and alumina, with some potash. It 
abounds in granite, gneiss, sienite, 
and porphyry. 

Serpentine is so called from its va¬ 
riegated colours, generally green. It 
consists of 32 silica, 37* magnesia, 


* alumina, 10* lime, with iron and 
carbonick acid 15. 

Curved gneiss proves that it once 
was fluid. It is in slaty layers or 
plates formed of felspar, quartz, and 
mica, separated by thin layers of 
mica, and it contains in its veins all 
the metals. 

Porphyry is stone with a compact 
base, intermixed with crystals. The 
base is of the trap kind, and the crys¬ 
tals felspar or quartz. 

Hornblende is an extensive clay 
mineral, forming slates and part of 
primitive rocks, of a greenish black 
colour. 

Jasper is found in veins of primi¬ 
tive rocks, or in nests of porphyry. 

Flint contains 98 silica, 0.5 lime, 
0.25 alumina, and 0.25 oxide of iron. 
It is found between beds of calca¬ 
reous rocks, but its origin is a mys¬ 
tery. 

Gray-wacke is a coarse kind ot 
slate, or grains of sand in a basis ot 
slate. 

Gypsum is sulphate of lime, sup¬ 
posed to be formed by the decompo¬ 
sition of iron pyrites, the acid from 
which has combined on the spot with 
lime. 

Chalk is found only in the north of 
Europe, and chiefly in the British 
Islands. It is imported into eastern 
countries as a rarity and curiosity. 

Alabaster differs from marble in 
containing sulphurick acid. There 
are three species, one of which is 
white, shining, and semi-transpa¬ 
rent. 

Pudding stone is rounded pebbles 
imbedded in cement, capable of be¬ 
ing fashioned and polished. 

Stalactitae, or stalactites, are crys¬ 
talline spar, which ooze from the 
earth over the tops of caverns, like 
icicles, often reaching the bottom, 
and forming solid sparry columns; 
and proving how similar oozings ce¬ 
ment all lower strata by the gradual 
precipitation of cement from upper 
strata. 

Portland stone is coarse grit, ce¬ 
mented with earthy spar. 

Potter’s clay is 43* silica, 33 alu¬ 
mina, 3* lime, 18 water, and 1 oxyde 
of iron. 

Emery is a mineral of 4 specifick 






92 


MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


gravities, containing 86 alumina, 3 
silica, and 4 iron. 

Soda is found in mineral seams, 
also in beds near Alexandria. The 
manufacturing chymists make it 
from common salt. 

There are two substances called 
marl, one earthy and the other a 
stratum, but not hard. The earthy 
is used as manure, as well as the 
other found in beds, in limestone 
and coal formations. 

In mining, from 8 lb. to 21 lb. of 
powder is employed for every cubick 
foot above it, according to the density 
of the soil. 

Salt in Cheshire is produced from 
salt pits, and chiefly from salt 
springs. The district is in the line 
which joins the Severn, the Dee, and 
the Mersey, and doubtless once con¬ 
sisted of lakes flooded at every tide, 
which, drying at certain seasons and 
at low tides, deposited beds of salt 
from Droitwich in Worcestershire, 
through Nantwich, Middlewich, and 
Northwich to the Mersey; brine 
springs flowing over beds of salt, or 
rock salt being found at different 
places in the entire line. 

Rock salt is found in Cheshire at 
the depth of from 28 to 50 yards, and 
the beds are from 1 yard to 40 yards 
thick, separated by clay or flag 
stones; the colour is reddish, and it 
is so hard as to require to be blasted 
with gunpowder. The largest mine 
is 330 feet deep and 20 feet high, sup¬ 
ported by pillars of the salt. 

The Droitwich springs contain one 
quarter of their weight in salt. It is 
said, that a stream of salt water runs 
250 feet below the surface, over which 
is 140 feet of gypsum, the boring of 
which produces the spring. 

There are extensive beds of salt at 
Lake Inder in Asiatick Russia, lat. 
48° 30', long. 69°. 

Salt springs and others from in¬ 
flammable gas, are found in China, 
in long. 101° 29', lat. 29°, near Thi¬ 
bet. They bore the well through the 
rocks, and prepare the salt by firing 
the gas of others, so that one heats 
300 kettles by gas fire. 

The sea, if desiccated, would afford 
a bed of salt 500 feet thick, 100 for 
every mile. 

Peat consists of black spongy earth 
and decayed vegetables. 


Coal beds become unproductive in 
the vicinity of porphyry or granite. 
Each particular stratum preserves 
its own parallelism though often in¬ 
terrupted by dikes and slips which 
are filled up with clay, sand, and 
rounded stones, evidently swept into 
them by water, and some of them 
contain basalt. Coal appears to have 
been used by the Saxons, and some 
believe by the Britons. So long since 
as the revolution, London consumed 
300000 chaldrons per annum. 

Strata of coal are not continuous, 
but divided both horizontally and per¬ 
pendicularly by dikes or chasms, by 
slips, hitches, and troubles, apparent¬ 
ly produced by the drying of the 
strata and by the sinking of the rocks 
beneath. 

A cubick foot of coal weighs from 
75 to 80 lbs., and 27 equal to a ton 
per cubick yard, or 4840 tons to an 
acre, of a yard thick, and in propor¬ 
tion. 

Carbureted hydrogen explodes in 
coal mines when there is one of gas 
to six or twelve of air, but at one to 
fifteen it merely lengthens the flame 
of a candle. Carbonick acid gas also 
abounds, but lying on the ground 
and first extinguishing candles, it is 
seldom fatal. 

The coal mines, which in Stafford¬ 
shire have been burning for 200 years, 
consist of pyrites, subject to spon¬ 
taneous combustion. Water will not 
extinguish them, because when 
drawn off or absorbed, the pyrites 
burn more than before. 

Newcastle obtained the first char¬ 
ter to dig coals in 1239, and in 1281 
the export was considerable. In 
1825, the produce was three millions 
of tons, and employed 70,000 per¬ 
sons, with a capital of two or three 
millions. 

The coal fields of England run 
from the Tay to Bristol, in length 
300 miles, and from 20 to 120 broad. 
They lie in the floetz or new se¬ 
condary rocks, and in the upper 
series or newest floetz, but chiefly in 
the former. 

The coal strata or independent coal 
formation consists of sandstone, 
white and gray, or reddish, slate- 
clay, fire-clay, iron stone, and green 
stone. 

Unlike the primary and secondary 







MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 93 


rocks, they are generally horizontal 

or nearly so. They vary from three 
degrees to twelve, or from one to four 
feet in twenty. 

At Newcastle, the bed two yards 
thick is 150 yards deep, and though 
there are eight beds above this, the 
thickest is but one foot, and the 
whole are but five feet. Thirty-three 
yards lower a bed of a yard presents 
itself, and fifty yards lower one of 
thirty-nine inches. Nine yards lower 
another of thirty-eight inches, and 
eleven yards lower, or 270 yards, a 
bed of two yards. Altogether there 
are sixteen beds in 270 yards depth, 
equal to eleven yards. The interven- 
ingstrataare sandstone or slate clay, 
in one place but four feet, but in ano¬ 
ther 120. Hence, if coal beds are 
decayed forests, covered by the sea 
there must have been sixteen inun¬ 
dations, and other beds are found 
lower to the depth of 1000 yards, 
while Scotland presents twenty-four 
beds in 233 yards. These beds then 
afford evidence of twenty-four revo¬ 
lutions of the perihelion, or confer 
an age on the world in this coal¬ 
forming period of 24—j—20900, or 
501600 years. Through the whole 
of the strata, animal and vegetable 
remains are found. In the mean 
time the globe must have been en¬ 
larged, if forests grew 1000 yards 
below the present level. 

In Staffordshire there are but thir¬ 
teen beds, but the depth is but 107 
yards, and there are twenty-three 
yards of the 107. The first occurs 
at sixteen yards of ten feet thick¬ 
ness, and three others of twenty- 
three feet, separated only by a few 
inches of bituminous stone. The 
lowest at 105 yards is seven feet and 
a half. The intervening strata are 
sandstone and clay, just as in other 
coal beds. 

Newcastle exports from 5 to 
600000 chaldrons of coals of 53 cwt. 
each, and nearly as much is ship¬ 
ped from Sunderland, Teignmouth, 
Wearmouth, &c. The beds are cal¬ 
culated to maintain this consumption 
for another 300 years, having main¬ 
tained it to half the extent for an 
equal past period. 

Duties on coals in the port of Lon¬ 
don are 9s. 4d. per chaldron, and to 
other ports 6s. The London duties 
are from 5607. to 6000007. per annum. 


28000 tons, or 31 million cubick 

yards of fresh coals are raised per 
. annum. 

Newcastle coals cost, at the pit’s 
mouth, per chaldron of 27 cwt., or 
12 bushels, 14s. for Wall’s End, and 
12s. for Eden Main. The charges for 
conveying to the ship, loading, &c., 
are 4s. 9|d.; the freight to London 
11s. the government duty 6s.; the 
city dues 4s. 9£d.; and the charges 
of unloading, measuring, and deli¬ 
vering at the cellars of consumers, 
are I3s. 7d.; making 21. 12s. llid. 
per chaldron. 

Newcastle ships a million and a 
quarter chaldrons; Sunderland three 
quarters of a million ; Wales about 
180000 ; Whitehaven 200000. New¬ 
castle and Sunderland also export 
about 120000 chaldrons 

Every family in England and Wales 
is considered as using, on the ave¬ 
rage, six chaldrons of coals, which 
makes the annual consumption about 
fourteen million chaldrons. 

The steam engines and gas manu¬ 
factories consume about six millions 
of tons more, making a total con¬ 
sumption of about twenty-two mil¬ 
lions of chaldrons or tons. The 
weight of the wholesale chaldron is, 
however, 28 cwt., and, therefore, the 
gross consumption will not be over¬ 
rated at twenty-five millions of tons. 

The apprehension of failure is a 
delusion: some of the most exten¬ 
sive coal districts being little worked, 
owing to the impolitic Newcastle 
monopoly. In Yorkshire there are 
exhaustless beds, which are sold at 
4s. or 5s. per ton. 

As coals are sold by measure, and 
small coals measure more than large 
ones, so the large masses drawn from 
pits near Newcastle are broken up 
by all the dealers before they reach 
the consumers. The difference is 
twenty, thirty, and fifty per cent.; 
and hence the merchants will receive 
no small coals, and they are obliged 
to be burned on the spot to destroy 
them. 

The Netherlands are rich in coals, 
and vast quantities are produced in 
the tracts between the low countries 
and the present French frontiers. 

At Barbadoes, asphaltum dug in 
the island is used instead of coal. In 
Trinidad there is a pitch lake on a 







MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


94 

cape, and three miles round, and of 
uncertain depth. It lies in furrows 
or chasms constantly changing, but 
is so hard as to reqmre to be broken 
with an axe. The district near con¬ 
sists of cinders and burned earth, and 
for a large extent appears to be of 
volcanick origin. By analysis, the 
asphaltum appears to consist of stone 
saturated with pitch. It is very in¬ 
flammable, and is considered as a re¬ 
sult of the changes from naphtha 
and petroleum, into tar and pitch by 
successive decompositions. 

Magnesia is obtained from mag¬ 
nesian limestone with the bittern of 
salt manufactories. The muriatick 
acid of the salt unites with the lime, 
and affords the magnesia. Exposed 
to the air it absorbs, in time, car- 
bonick acid; becoming lime again, 
and unfit for medicine. It has been 
found pure in New Jersey. 

Magnesian limestone effervesces 
little in acids, and it renders dilute 
nitrick acid milky. It contains about 
20 magnesia, 30 lime, 48 carbonick 
acid, % and one of clay and oxyde of 
iron. 

The smell in lime-slacking arises 
from the ascent of part of the lime, 
with the aqueous vapour. 

Limestone, marble, and chalk, by 
burning, form lime, which does not 
unite with alkalies or oxygen, and 
only with sulphur and phosphorus 
among combustibles and their and 
other acids. In becoming mild, it 
renders insoluble matter soluble, and 
hence its use as a manure under due 
caution. 

Puzzolana is decomposed lava. 
Tarras is decomposed basalt, mixed 
with two parts of slacked lime. 

In 3J years mortar regains its de¬ 
finite proportion as carbonate of 
lime, or 63 per cent., from the car¬ 
bonick acid gas in the atmosphere. 

One bushel of coals makes four or 
five of lime, and magnesian lime¬ 
stone less; while this last loses half 
its weight. 

In Bundelcund there are diamond 
mines, in a range of hills near Pan- 
nah. One of them produced the 
largest known diamond, and they are 
still moderately productive. They lie 
six or seven hundred miles from Cal¬ 
cutta. 


The two largest diamonds in Eu¬ 

rope are that belonging to the Em¬ 
peror of Russia, which weighs 195 
carats, or lj oz. troy; 90000Z. was 
given for it, and an annuity to the 
merchant of 4000Z. per annum. The 
other is the Pitt diamond, which 
weighs but 136 carets, for wdiich, in 
1720, 100000Z. was paid by the court 
of France. Diamonds are imitated 
by combining one half red or white 
lead, with silex, potash, and some 
borax or arsenick. 

Emeralds are green, and prismat- 
ick or rhomboidal. The beryl is an 
inferior species. The prismatick, is 
one-third silica, and one-fifth alu¬ 
mina ; and the latter, or best, two- 
thirds silica to one-sixth alumina. 

The oriental garnet is red, and 
the common garnet brown or green, 
of the size of a pea or larger. They 
are found in primitive rocks. 

The hardness of precious stones is 
in the following order : Diamond, 
ruby, sapphire, topaz, hyacinth, eme¬ 
rald, garnet, amethyst, agate, tur¬ 
quoise, and opal. 

Amber is a mineral substance, 
w r hite or yellow. Its oil is used in 
eau de luce. When rubbed it be¬ 
comes negatively electrical, like seal¬ 
ing-wax. It is a vegetable gum ; 
but some have considered it as ho¬ 
ney converted into bitumen. Some 
pieces contain insects and leaves of 
unknown species, of the age of or- 
ganick remains. 

From 150 to 200 tons of amber 
are found annually in the sand on 
the shore between Pillau and Po- 
lungen. It is also there in beds of 
pit coal. 

Pits of fuller’s earth are found in 
Bedfordshire. There lie over the 
stratum several strata of red sand, 
six vards thick ; then a stratum of 
sandstone seven or eight yards ; 
then other sands; then the fuller’s 
earth. Below it is white free-stone, 
and below that sand again. 

Blasting is used for the hardest 
limestones, green stone, basalt, sie- 
nite, gneiss, and granite. 

The Earths are silica, lime, alu¬ 
mina, magnesia, with barytes, stron- 
tites, glucina, zirconia, yttria, and 
thorina. 

Soils are divided into clay,- clayey 






95 


MINERALS, METALS. AND CRYSTALS. 


loams,rich loams, sandy loams, sand, 
peat-earth, chalk and gravel; and 
in grass each sustains particular 
kinds best; in the rotation of crops 
each requires different succession, 
and demands different kinds of ma¬ 
nure and treatment. 

Soils consist of silica, lime, alu¬ 
mina, magnesia, oxvdes of iron, and 
animal and vegetable remains ; and 
on the union depends fertility, for too 
great an excess of one renders soil 
barren. Bulbous and tap roots grow 
where sand predominates ; but fi¬ 
brous roots require more clay and 
firm substances. 

Metals are considered as unde- 
composable substances, yet those 
that are inflammable must evidently 
contain hydrogen. They are twenty- 
three in number as under :— 

Specifick gravity. 


Platinum .23 

Gold .19.376 

Silver.10.5 

Mercury.13.57 

Palladium.11.87 

Rhodium.11. 

Copper.8.8 

Iron. 7.7 

Nickel . 8.8 

Tin. 7.3 

Lead.11.4 

Zinc . 7.19 

Bismuth. 9.85 

Antimony. 6.712 

Tellurium.*. 6.115 

Arsenick. 8.31 

Cobalt. 7.7 

Manganese. 8.013 

Cromium. 5.9 

Uranium. 9. 

Molybdenum. 8.611 

Tungsten.17.6 

Titanium. 4.2 


Metallick veins in rocks have the 
appearance of being exudations from 
the substance of the rock ; a brown 
vein proves the presence of iron, and 
sometimes of tin ; straw colour of 
lead; green of copper. Silver is 
only discovered among certain 
classes of limestone. 

When the dislocations or fractures 
of strata are filled with stones or 
earth, and the separations are wide, 
they are called faults or dykes; and 
when filled with metallick ores they 
are called veins. In these last are 
found the ores of metals separated 


from the rocks by gypsous spar, 
quartz, clay, or earth, called the ma¬ 
trix or rider of the ore. When the 
veins are not filled up with matrix, 
the ores are crystallized round the 
cavity. The ore also contains sul¬ 
phur, arsenick, and earthy sub¬ 
stances, besides different metals, 
which are separated by washing, 
roasting, reducing, assaying, &c. 

Ores are always found as alloys, 
sulphurets, oxydes, or salts. Gold, 
platinum, and columbium are found 
only as alloys. Silver, mercury, cop¬ 
per, iron, antimony, arsenick, and 
cobalt, in the four states. Lead and 
zinc, in the three last. Others va¬ 
rious, in two or three states; and 
tungsten, uranium, titanium, chro¬ 
mium, and tantalium,only as oxydes. 

Metals have five degrees of lustre— 
splendent , shining , glistening , glim¬ 
mering, dull. 

Gold is yellow, copper red, iron 
gray, lead blue, and cobalt and man¬ 
ganese gray; all the rest are white. 

Iron, manganese, tungsten, and 
palladium are the hardest of the 
metals; the next in hardness plati¬ 
num and nickel; the next are copper 
and silver ; and the next cobalt, an¬ 
timony, zinc, tin, and gold. 

In the earliest ages no metals were 
used but those found pure, as gold, 
silver and copper. The smelting of 
ores was a comparatively late inven¬ 
tion, and ascribed both to observa¬ 
tions on volcanoes and to the burning 
of forests. 

Lodes and mines are by many 
supposed to have been passes of 
streams of water choaked up ; and 
in most mines such streams still re¬ 
main. In Cornwall they run from 
east to west; but in other countries 
they often run from north to south. 
The tests of a probable mine are mi¬ 
neral waters, trees or grass disco¬ 
loured, metallick ore or sand, and the 
products of boring. 

One million ounces of gold are 
supposed to be produced annually. 

The obtaining of gold in mining 
countries costs about fifteen times as 
much as silver; and this cost affects 
the future price in the market in that 
proportion. 

Gold is so malleable that it mav 
be_ beaten into leaves of which 






























% 


MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


280000 would be but an inch thick, 
and so tenacious that wire but the 
thirteenth of an inch in diameter will 
suspend 150 lbs. Gold is too soft to 
be used pure, and to harden it it is 
alloyed with copper or silver. In its 
pure state, gold bullion is considered 
as twenty-four carats, and then it 
is sold by the number of carats of 
pure gold, and gold of twenty-two 
carats is that used in our coin; two 
parts of which are copper. Gold 
plate is about eighteen carats or one- 
fourth copper. 

The hundred-thousanth part of a 
grain of gold may be seen by the 
naked eye, and a cube of gold whose 
side is but the hundreth of an inch, 
has 2433 million of visible parts. 
A cylinder of silver covered with 

f jold leaf may be drawn out 350 miles 
ong, and yet the gold will cover it. 

Gold leaf can be reduced to the 
300 thousandth part of an inch, and 
gilding to the ten millionth. Silver 
leaf to the 170 thousandth. The spe- 
cifick gravities are 193 to 195. 

Kelly's Cambist. 

Lace gilding is the millionth of 
an inch thick; gold leaf the 200 thou¬ 
sandth. Platina wire may be the 
50000th of an inch. 500 inches of 
gold wire has been drawn from a 
grain. Tin-foil is the one thousandth 
of an inch ; that is, 200 gold leaves 
are only equal in thickness to one 
of tin-foil. 

A mass of 25 lbs. of pure gold has 
been found in Siberia. 

Silver leaf breaks at the 160000th 
part of an inch, or three times the 
thickness of gold leaf. It tarnishes 
from sulphur, and dissolves in sul- 
phurick and nitrick acid. 

Silver can be beat into plates, of 
which 110000 make an inch, and 
drawn into wire, of which the thir¬ 
teenth of an inch will sustain 137 lbs. 

The weight of an ingot of silver is 
from 50 to 60 lbs. and the weight of 
an ingot of gold is 15 lbs. troy. 

The quick-silver mines in Carni- 
ola are the most productive in Eu¬ 
rope, and have been explored 900 
feet deep. The mercury is found in 
clay, stones, and it often issues from 
the rocks spontaneously. The mines 
yield 12000 quintals, or 1200 tons 
weight per annum, and yield a mil¬ 


lion of florins to the imperial reve¬ 

nue ; and half the quantity of native 
cinnabar. Till within fifty years all 
the steel used in English manufac¬ 
tures was made in Carniola from 
the iron with which it also abounds. 
Trieste is its port. 

Mercury is found in combination 
with sulphur, as cinnabar in Austria 
and Mexico, and sometimes native. 

The platinum of commerce is found 
in the Spanish mines in South Ame¬ 
rica in grains, which appear to be a 
compound of eight several metals: 
as palladium, rhodium, irydium, 
osmium, &c. A platinum wire of 
the thirteenth .of an inch will sus¬ 
pend 274 lbs. 

Iron, as well as glass, was acci¬ 
dentally discovered by a fire made of 
iron stone in one case; and of lumps 
of natron and silicious matter in the 
case of glass. The Greeks ascribe 
the discovery of iron to themselves, 
and referred glass to the Phoenicians, 
but Moses relates that iron was 
wrought by Tubal-Cain, Noah’s bro¬ 
ther. 

The irhn stone is known to prac¬ 
tical men by its weight and other 
characteristicks. But no iron is visi¬ 
ble in the fracture. It is as easy to 
believe that it is then formed from 
primitive atoms, as to conceive that 
it is an oxyde of what never existed 
in a native state to be oxydized. 

An iron wire the thirteenth of an 
inch in diameter suspends 549 lbs. 
The air oxydates it in the red or yel¬ 
low powder called rust. It burns 
brilliantly in oxygen gas. The black 
oxyde of iron contains 79 iron and 
21 oxygen. The red oxyde or per- 
oxyde is obtained by putting red hot 
iron filings in an open vessel and 
agitating them till they produce the 
common red paint. It is the oxyde 
which produces the red colour of 
bricks and clays. It is 69 iron and 
31 oxygen. Carbonate of iron, or 
iron and carbon, is black lead, or 19 
parts of carbon and one of iron. 
Phosphuret of iron is called syderum. 

The ores of iron, or iron stone, are 
considered as mixture of clay with 
oxyde of iron. They are mixed with 
charcoal and lime in a large furnace, 
and the oxygen combines with the 
charcoal, and the clay with the lime, 
by which the grains of iron are sepa- 





07 


MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


rated and melted, so as to run out in 
a fluid state at the bottom of the fur¬ 
nace. It is white, gray, or black, 
and when cool has a density of 7.5. 

This cast iron is then converted 
into bar or wrought iron by being 
melted in charcoal, and ashes with 
scoria of iron, and by repeated forg¬ 
ing it becomes malleable. 

Bar iron is then converted into 
steel by being stewed while red hot 
with charcoal for three to seven 
days. It is then cast in ingots, and 
its specifick gravity becomes 7.8, and 
in chymical language it is subcarbu¬ 
ret of iron. 

Cast iron is a supercarburet of iron; 
and wrought or soft iron is the sim¬ 
ple metal divested of foreign mate¬ 
rials. 

These several conversions employ 
69 thousand men in the largest and 
most imposing manufactories. The 
mines which afford iron stone em¬ 
ploy great numbers. It is then roast¬ 
ed or burned; afterwards exposed to 
great heat in immense furnaces ex¬ 
cited by vast bellows wrought by 
steam engines. The casting is then 
a curious process into pigs or ingots, 
or utensils of all kinds. The pud¬ 
dling, forging, and tilting, then call for 
machinery of gigantick size. Then 
follows the steel conversion, and 
finally the cutler. 

The best steel used in British ma¬ 
nufactures is made from Swedish 
iron, of which there is used about 
10000 tons annually. One of the 
principal establishments in England 
for converting Swedish iron into 
steel, is that of Nayler and Sander¬ 
son, of Sheffield. They make most 
of the fine steel which is made into 
cutlery in that town at the celebrated 
manufactories of Rodgers, Picksley, 
Champion, and others. 

Iron furnaces among the Romans 
were unprovided with bellows, but 
were placed on eminences with the 
grate in the direction of prevailing 
winds. Blasting bellows are now r the 
must colossal structures in the entire 
range of manufactories, some of them 
being of such sizes as to be wrought 
by a steam engine of eighty horse 
power, and their roar on entering the 
fire may often be heard for miles. 
The object of all such contrivances 
is to keep up a supply of oxygen gas, 


which being fixed by the hydrogen 
evolved by the fuel, its motion is 
transferred to the ore which is to be 
swelled and de-oxydated, while the 
lime which is mixed with the ore 
melts and combines with the argil¬ 
laceous substance in which the iron 
is imbedded. Experiments have late¬ 
ly been made to add to the power of 
the air driven through the bellows, 
by previously heating it. In the 
largest class of blasting bellows the 
blowing cylinder is eight feet in di¬ 
ameter, and it discharges twenty- 
four cylinders per minute, or nearly 
12000 cubick feet of air with the force 
of 3 lbs. to the square inch; but, in 
general, one engine operates on dif¬ 
ferent furnaces with 3 or 4000 cubick 
feet of air per minute. A single fur¬ 
nace thus smelts from forty to fifty 
tons of pig iron daily. 

In twenty-four^ years the imports 
of bar iron have varied from 32C00 
tons in 1806, to 15000 in 1828, while 
the re-exports in 1806 were 5000 tons, 
and in 1828, 3000 tons. The market 
prices were, in 1806, from 15/. 10s. to 
18/. 10s.; and in 1828, 13Z. 10s. to 18/. 
10s. The duty is 30s. or from Ca¬ 
nada, 20s. 

There are about 700000 tons of 
iron made per annum by nearly 300 
furnaces, of which ninety are in 
South Wales and 95 in Staffordshire, 
&c. 

In 1740, the quantity was but 17000 
tons from fifty-nine furnaces. The 
imports from Sweden are 15000 tons. 

The quantity of iron converted in 
the United Kingdom by 278 furnaces, 
w-as, in 1828, about 735000 tons of 
pig iron, which yield two-thirds of 
wrought iron, or about 545000 tons, 
of which 150000 are exported in bars, 
hardware, and arms. 50000 tons of 
old iron are also manufactured. 

Of the quantity of iron, South 
Wales produces 279J thousand tons, 
Staffordshire 2I9A, Shropshire 81j> 
Scotland 37f, Yorkshire 33, Derby¬ 
shire 22L and North Wales 25. The 
quantity has increased 100000 tons 
per annum. 

5C000 tons were exported in 1814, 
at a declared value of 1143357/. and 
100000 tons in 1828, at a declared va¬ 
lue of only 1226820/. 

In 1740, according to Marshall, 
the pig iron was but 17000 tons ; in 





99 


MINERALS, METAL 

1788, it was 68000-; in 1796, 125000; 
and in 1828, five times more. 

The United States, in 1828, took 
4822 tons of cutlery, being above half 
our exports. 

Colnbrook dale is a winding glen 
between two hills, about eight miles 
long and two broad. It supplies iron 
ore, coal, and lime, to some of the 
largest smelting and casting esta¬ 
blishments in the kingdom. Iron 
stone china is also made here, and 
it has been for many years a seat of 
astonishing production. 

The steel and iron factories at 
Pittsburgh consume 11000 tons per 
annum; 3500 in castings, and 7500 
in rolling. 18 tons of nails are made 
daily, and there are seven steam en¬ 
gine factories. The iron is made at 
Juniata. 

All the iron smelted from ore in 
England, and used or exported, is 
equal to a cube of forty-six yards; 
and all the materials extracted to 
make it, and the iron, would make a 
solid of 162 yards, or the 1500th of a 
cubick mile, consequently iron mi¬ 
ners would be 1500 years in disem¬ 
bowelling a cubick mile of iron stone, 
lime, and coal, taking the whole as 
forty times the bulk of the produced 
iron. 

Daunemora is the largest iron mine 
in Sweden, and Fahlun is the great¬ 
est copper mine in that kingdom of 
rich mines. The ore forms a large 
vein in a hill, thirty miles from Upsal. 
It is wrought to a considerable depth 
by blasting, and the ore affords 50 per 
cent of cast iron. It is the iron which 
is converted into steel at Sheffield, 
and known by its mark of three balls. 
Its superiority in England is ascribed 
to its being smelted with wood in¬ 
stead of coke. 

It is ascertained that in regard to 
the blasting bellows in iron works, 
that hot air passed through the bel¬ 
lows produces thirty-six tons of iron 
No. 1, in eleven castings, and that 
cold air produces but thirty-three 
tons, chiefly of No. 3. The effect ap¬ 
pears to be occasioned by the pre-ex¬ 
isting power of the heated air, by 
which the power of the bellows is 
augmented. 

Copper wire the thirteenth of an 
inch will sustain 302 lbs. Copper 
pyrites is a native sulphuret of cop- 


S, AND CRYSTALS. _^ 

per. Silver coin contains one thir¬ 

teenth of copper. 

The great Swedish copper mine at 
Fahlun yields from the ore but one 
and a half per cent., and has the ap¬ 
pearance, says Thomson, of iron py¬ 
rites. It is a vast open cone. It has 
been worked for 5 or 600 years, and 
when most productive yielded 8 mil¬ 
lion lbs. 

Parys mountain in Anglesea has 
yielded from 40 to 800000 tons of ore 
annually, of which 25 per cent, was 
sulphur, and from 25 to 1£ per cent, 
copper. In the stratum over the ore 
is sulphate of lead, which yields 40 
per cent, of lead and 57 ounces of sil¬ 
ver for every ton of lead. There are 
two mines, the Mona and Parys. 

Cornwall is the most productive 
and celebrated of the mining districts 
of Great Britain. The mines run 
from St. Austle westerly to St. Ag¬ 
nes, by Redruth to St. Ive’s Bay, 
and on the surface it is a dreary dis¬ 
trict. The country also abounds in 
granite, with various proportions of 
felspar, quartz, and mica. The mines 
are tin, copper, and lead; and in 
strata of schistus and granite. The 
tin is calciform and glass-like, the 
matrix argil or silex; and the world 
has been supplied with this metal 
from hence since the days of the 
Phoenicians. Copper, now so im- 
ortant a product, was not produced 
ere till the Revolution. The ancient 
workings on the eastern coast are ex¬ 
hausted, and the present produce is 
25000 blocks, worth 10Z. or 12Z. each. 
Tin oar is the heaviest, but easily 
melted. The Huelor mine is 840 feet 
deep and spreads 1} miles, employing 
1300 people. All the mines employ 
sixty steam engines, some 1000 horse 
power; and their average duty is 34. 
85 millions of pounds one foot high, 
per bushel. The Poldice mine yields 
a thousand blocks; but as.copper 
follows the tin, many of them now 
are copper mines, from ore of py¬ 
rites and sulphur, all among granite, 
and inclined from 60° to 76°. The en¬ 
tire produce is about 4700 tons, 
worth now but 71. or 8Z. Crenms, 
Huel, Alfred, and St. George’s, are 
the most productive at present. Near 
Helstone there are two lead mines, 
and at Endillion one of antimony. 
Gold and silver are also found, as 
well as bismuth, asbestos, and lapis 





MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 99 


calaminaris. The Tintagel slate pit 

is 300 yards long, 100 broad, and 80 
deep. Moor stone, or granite, slates, 
and china stone, or steatites, for fine 
pottery, are also sources of wealth, 
and the whole employ from 12 to 15- 
000 people of all ages. 

In Cornwall there are about fifty 
copper mines, thirty tin mines, twen¬ 
ty copper and tin, five silver and lead, 
three cobalt and antimony, and two 
of manganese. Tin and copper ex¬ 
ist in veins and fissure-s called lodes, 
one side granite and the other clay, 
in lines from east to west ; occasion¬ 
ally in layers. It is cast into blocks 
from 3 to 4 cwt.; and then assayed 
at Cornwall, Lestwythiel, Truro, 
Helston, or Penzance. The produce 
per annum is about 25000 blocks, 
averaging 3 cwt. 

A lead wire, the thirteenth of an 
inch sustains 28 lbs. 

The Stannaries are the tin and 
copper mines of Cornwall. 


lead, and often contains antimony, 
silver, and zinc. 

Selenium is a new metal obtained 
by Berzelius from the pyrites of Fah- 
lun. Its specifick gravity is 4.32, 
and it is a deep brown. 

Cadimum is another metal in union 
with zinc, with a specifick gravity 
of 8.604, and of a gray colour. 

Wodanium is gray, and 11.47. 

These are new metals and very 
different from the factitious, evanes¬ 
cent globules procured by Davy from 
galvanick combination with alkalies. 
They make the number thirty. 

Magnetick pyrites is a sulphuret 
of iron, 63 iron and 37 sulphur, and 
called loadstone. Super-sulphuret 
of iron is the common iron pyrites, 
47 iron and 53 sulphur. 

Gun metal is 12 lbs. of tin and 100 
of copper. 

Bath metal is 2 lb. of brass- and 
nine ounces of zinc. 


The copper mines of England, 
chiefly in Cornwall, Anglesea, and 
Glamorganshire, yield about 16000 
tons. 


The lead mines in Derbyshire, 
Cumberland, &c. yield about 15000 
tons per annum. 


A tin wire the thirteenth of an inch 
sustains but 34.7 lbs. 


Manganese has so great an aptitude 
to combine with oxygen, that, on 
being exposed to the air it absorbs 
so much as to fall into powder ; if 
thrown into water it decomposes, 
the water becomes green, and is 
found to have absorbed 0.15 of oxy¬ 
gen. If this be exposed to the air it 
turns brown, and is found to contain 
one-fourth oxygen. In a native state 
the oxyde contains four-tenths. From 
this cause the native black oxyde is 
used to obtain oxygen gas, which 
may be expelled by heat. The red 
oxyde of iron contains 0.41 of oxy¬ 
gen ; arsenick acid one half; and red 
chromium double. 


Zinc wire sustains 110 lbs. and if 
heated above boiling water, it may 
be rolled very thin, and drawn into 
wire. At a red heat it inflames, and 
disperses in flakes. It amalgamates 
with most of the metals, making a 
sort of paste. 

Galena is the native sulphuret of 


Quartz is a sparkling stone, very 
abundant, from the common pebble 
to mountain veins and entire rocks. 
Its crystals, when pure, are rock 
crystal: purple-coloured are called 
amethysts, and yellow, topazes. 

Felspar, next to quartz, is the 
most abundant stone ; being a con¬ 
stituent of granite and other rocks. 
It scratches glass, and gives out 
sparks with steel; but is inferiour to 
quartz in hardness. It is the pe¬ 
tuntse of the Chinese, and the vitrify¬ 
ing ingredient of their porcelain. 

Silex is a stone sufficiently hard 
to scratch glass—sparkling, but 
never in crystals. Common flint 
and light-coloured pebbles are wholly 
of this stone. 

Calcareous spar is crystallized 
carbonate of lime, one of whose 
purest varieties is Iceland spar. 

Iceland spar, the substance which 
produces double images, consists of 
56 lime and 44 carbonick acid, with 
a specifick gravity 2.714. The faces 
are parallel, anil inclined 105° 5', 
but even and polished, splitting al¬ 
ways on the face. From this cause 
it produces a double image, a direct 
one, and another which is the result 
of all the reflections from all the sur¬ 
faces, which being regular, p oduce 
a definite effect. The same property 




100 MINERALS, METALS, AND CRYSTALS. 


is possessed by all transparent 
bodies, made up of little regular cubes, 
and the extraordinary ray is a re¬ 
sult of the regular reflections at a 
definite angle "from all the surfaces. 
In glass, water, &c. there is no such 
set of surfaces; and the light is, 
therefore, diffused through the mass, 
producing no regular secondary ray, 
only a general luminosity. 

Agates are aggregates of different 
species, as quartz, flint, amethyst, &c. 
differing in colour and transparency, 
but sliding into one another by im¬ 
perceptible gradations. Mocho stones 
containing little stems of moss, and 
variegated Scotch pebbles, are ag¬ 
ates. - 

Glauberite is a crystallized salt, 
composed of nearly equal parts of 
sulphate of lime and sulphate of 
soda, without water. It is found 
among the rock salt of South Ame¬ 
rica. 

Analcime, or cubizite, is found in 
grouped crystals, deposited by water 
in the fissures of hard lavas. It melts 
under the blowpipe into semi-trans¬ 
parent glass. 

Zircone is a hard transparent stone, 
susceptible of a fine polish, and has 
a double refraction. It has two 
varieties, hyacinth and jargon ; the 
former yellowish-red, and the latter 
without colour. 

Tabasheer is a transparent fluid in 
the joints of the bamboo. It thick¬ 
ens till it is converted into a white 
solid, and is composed of silica. 
Humboldt discovered it in the bam¬ 
boos of South America; and a solid 
pebble is so hard as to cut glass. 

The Emerald is ranked among the 
gems, but is now found only in Peru. 
It is green, harder than quartz, and 
always in crystals. Oriental emerald 
is a green sapphire. 

The Beryl is a variety of the em¬ 
erald, of a paler green or blue. The 
emerald of Brazil is a tourmaline. 

Corundum is a stone found in In¬ 
dia and China, which in crystals, is 
a six sided prism, and called ada¬ 
mantine spar. 

The Amethyst, Ruby, Sapphire, 
and Topaz, are varieties of this spar, 
differing chiefly in colour. The ame¬ 
thyst is reddish violet; the ruby red; 


the sapphire blue; and the topaz yel¬ 
low :—termed oriental gems. 

The tourmaline is hard enough to 
scratch glass, and becomes electrick 
by heat. It is transparent when 
viewed across the thickness of its 
crystal, but opaque when turned in 
the opposite direction. 

Apophyllite, or fish-eye-stone, has 
a pearly lustre, like moonstone, and 
its crystals are various. 

Leucocyolite is a name given to a 
variety of apophyllite. 

Cairngorm is a species of quartz. 

When fluids evaporate and become 
solid, or when they freeze, they ge¬ 
nerally solidify in regular figures 
called Crystals, sometimes cubes, 
or four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, 
or twelve-sided figures, terminated 
by ends always regular. The sepa¬ 
ration and analysis of these figures 
reduces them to six primitive forms. 
1. The parallelopiped, with six 
parallel sides, of which there are 
forty species of minerals. 2. The 
octahedron consists of two four¬ 
sided pyramids, joined at the base, 
and contains thirty species of mine¬ 
rals. 3. The tetrahedron consists of 
four equal triangles, and belongs to 
only two minerals, ores of copper. 

There are from 12 to 1500 differ¬ 
ent crystals; and one observer has 
described 642 crystals of carbonate 
of lime. 

The crystals of congealing water 
shoot at an angle of 120°. When 
solutions freeze it is the water in 
them that freezes and the foreign 
substance is entangled or sometimes 
separated. 

When water solidifies into ice, its 
crystals cross each other at angles 
of 60°, and enlarge the bulk nearly 
an eighth, with such force as to ex¬ 
plode rocks, trees, and even pieces 
of artillery. 

Mica and tale are prisms with 
rhomboidal bases, with obtuse an¬ 
gles of 120°. Felspar is an oblique 
quadrangular prism, with a paral¬ 
lelogram. Sal ammoniack takes the 
form of octahedrons and cubes; and 
fluor spar of cubes. The diamond 
is often in the octahedron form, but 
it varies. 

Mica is found in such large plates 






MOUNTAINS. 


101 


m many mountains, as to be used as 
a substitute for glass, being semi¬ 
transparent, tough, flexible and elas- 
tick. In Siberia, some specimens 
are 2£ yards square. 

Certain bodies, when passing from 
the fluid to the solid form separate 
into portions or crystals, assuming 
a determinate angular shape. It is 
a species of congelation ; and ice 
was called crystal by the Greeks. 

Some crystals are rhombs or 
rhomboids, because they are solids 
whose faces have those figures, and 
are rhomboidal solids. Others are 
described by the number of their 
sides or faces. One with four faces 
is called a tetrahedron ; with six, a 
hexahedron ; with eight, an octohe- 
dron; with twelve, a dodecahedron; 
with twenty, an icosahedron ; and 
one having many sides, is a polyhe¬ 
dron A cube is a hexahedron. 

Rochelle salt crystallizes in large 
regular eight sided prisms. 

Gold, silver, and copper pyrites, 
and salt, crystallize as cubes. Cal¬ 
careous spar (angle 105°), quartz, 
emerald, and tourmalin crystallize 
as parallelopipeds, with rhomboidal 
sides, i. e. with unequal angles. Dia¬ 
mond, the magnet, antimony, and 
bismuth have the regular octahedron 
form; calomel and topaz, the same 
form with right angle bases. Sul¬ 
phur and carbonate of soda the same 
in two pyramids with rhomboid base. 
Emerald and cinnabar have six- 
sided prisms. 

Hauy, in his theory of crystalli¬ 
zation, conceives that all the forms 
may be produced by atomick mole¬ 
cules of three species. The tetrahe¬ 
dron, the triangular prism, and the 
parallelopiped, of four, five, and six 
sides: and Wollaston conceives that 
even these figures maybe formed by 
piling spherical atoms, which he 
considers the fundamental form. 

The six-sided prism consists of six 
equal right angled sides with a six- 
sided base; seven pieces of mineral 
are of this form. 

The dodecahedron, of which there 
are two figures; one the rhomboid 
and the other the triangle. Two mi¬ 
nerals have rhomboid sides, one of 
which is garnet, and two only the 
other. I 


Gold and silver crystallize in four- 
sided pyramids: copper the same : 
tin in rhombodial prisms: lead 
in four-sided pyramids : zinc the 
same: bismuth in four-sided paral¬ 
lelopipeds : antimony in oblong per¬ 
pendiculars : arsenick in tetrahe¬ 
drons. 

In crystallizing, fluor, spar and 
common salt make cubes. Nitre a 
six-sided prism, and sulphate of 
magnesia a four-sided prism. 

The diana arbor is a tree like crys¬ 
tallization of silver and mercury in 
nitrous acid. 

Common salt dissolved in viscid 
liquids crystallizes like the leaves 
and branches of fir. 

Goniometers are delicate instru¬ 
ments for measuring the angles of 
crystals, and a very accurate one has 
been invented by Dr. Brewster. 

A nail-maker has made by hand 
17030 flooring nails in a week. Each 
nail takes twfenty-five strokes with 
a 2 lb. hammer, and from one to 
three blasts with bellows. 

Naphtha is purer and lighter than 
the petroleum of coal, of which it 
seems to be a native species. 

Putty is oxyde of lead, or whitening 
and sweet oil. 

Ochres are earths and oxydes of 
iron. 

Earth is eaten as bread in several 
parts of the world. Near Moscow, 
a hill furnishes earth of this descrip¬ 
tion, which will ferment when mixed 
with flour ; in Louisiana, the In¬ 
dians eat a white earth with salt; 
and the Indians on the Oronooka 
eat a certain unctious earth in like 
manner. 


MOUNTAINS. 

The old continent may be consi¬ 
dered as having for its nucleus an 
immense chain of mountains, which 
stretches 8000 miles from east to 
west, under various names. In Eu¬ 
rope, it bears the names of Pyrenees, 
Alps, &c. and in Asia; Caucasus, 
Himalaya, and Thibet, and Tartary, 
till it reaches the Pacifick Ocean. 
Atlas is part of this ridge ; and 
Etna and the Greek mountains are 


12 






MOUNTAINS. 


102 _ 

branches of the general chain. The 
heights are various; or in Europe 
from 6 to 15000 feet, and in Asia 
from 10 to 28000. This ridge, then 
determines the general form of the 
continent, and the course of the 
rivers. Some call it the spine of 
Europe and Asia ; while the Andes 
in America, are called the backbone 
of that continent. 

The countries to the north and 
south are governed in their eleva¬ 
tion by their connexion with this 
great chain: some are its valleys, 
and others are table lands or steppes, 
all sustaining different levels from 
the sea. I taly is merely the declivi¬ 
ties of the Appenines, and Barbary 
of the Atlas chain; and Bohemia is 
a circular valley, and Hungary 
another. Asia Minor is an elevated 
plateau; Persia is also a high pla¬ 
teau depressed in the middle; Thibet 
is a vast plateau, more extensive and 
more elevated, sustained on one side 
by the Himalayas, and on the north 
by the Altai mountains, both 20000 
feet high, while the immense plateau 
is 9000 feet. The tract northward of 
the mountain chain is a vast plain, 
which includes England, France, 
Holland, Germany, and Russia to 
the Ural chain, so level that it 
has been said a ball with sufficient 
force would roll from Paris to Pe- 
tersburgh ; the whole is a flat be¬ 
tween the sea and the mountain 
chain, descending to Holland and 
the shores of the Baltic. All the ri¬ 
vers run from the chain to the Ger¬ 
man, Baltic, or Northern Ocean. But 
the Danube and Wolga, filling up the 
basin of the Black Sea, also con¬ 
curs with the Nile, to fillup the valley 
or great basin of the Mediterranean. 

South of the great chain, the de¬ 
serts of Africa and Arabia, and the 
plains of India present themselves; 
and the rivers, the Indus, the Gan¬ 
ges, &c. fall, with the land towards 
the Indian and Southern Ocean. 

The Southern Ocean itself is an 
extraordinary phenomena : it covers 
a third of the earth, and bounds 
have been set to its encroachments 
by pointed capes, whose founda¬ 
tions are connected with the gra- 
nitick base of the earth. Its disposi¬ 
tion to encroach on the land is 
evinced by the acute angles and 
mountainous character of all the 


promontories which present them¬ 

selves to it; while in the north, the 
passive character of the ocean is 
evinced by the obtuse forms both of 
Asia and America. The elevated land 
of the old continent occupies a space 
equal to five millions of square miles. 

In America there is a similar 
mountainous ridge, of which all the 
habitable land is the declivity. It 
begins in the Rocky Mountains and 
the Alleganies, in lat. 45, and ex¬ 
tends to the Straits of Magellan ; 
but it differs from the other great 
chain in being from north to south, 
owing to which its great rivers run 
from west to east, except the Missis¬ 
sippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Pa¬ 
raguay, and the Parana. 

The greatest elevations are in the 
torrid zone, and are from 20 to 28000 
feet; those in the temperate zone are 
from 12 to 16000; and those in the 
frigid, only from 5 to 6000. The ele¬ 
vation of perpetual snow varies with 
the heat of the surface. Near the 
equator it is 15700 feet; within the 
tropics 15000; in the temperate zone 
8600; and in Norway from 4500 to 
5000. Under the equator the fertile 
plains of Q,uito are 9500 feet above 
the level of the sea. The town of 
Riobamba is 10700 feet; and the city 
of Mexico enjoys a fine climate at 
7500 feet; while in Europe, &c. the 
hardiest pines grow only at that ele¬ 
vation : and in the frigid zone, only 
at the height of 500 feet. 

The Andes chain is 4600 miles 
long from the Straits of Magellan 
to the Gulf of Darien, about 100 miles 
from the shore of the Pacifick, and of 
an average height of 1| mile from 
the level, of the sea. In truth, the 
same chain runs through Mexico and 
to the Rocky Mountains of North 
America and the Alleganies in New 
England. It is a sort of buttress 
against which the whole American 
continent leans, and the nucleus of 
its formation by the washing of the 
hills, and the working of the ocean. 
They are chiefly composed of clay 
slate, on which lies limestone and 
iron sandstone, while the loftiest are 
the newest porphyry, with little visi¬ 
ble granite. The clay slate is sup¬ 
posed to be volcanick, as volcanoes 
are numerous, and thev exude mud 
and clay, which in thousands of 
years become clay slate, and hence 




MOUNTAINS 


organick remains at heights of two 

miles. 

Mont Blanc is the highest of the 
Alps, and in Europe. It is 15600 feet, 
or three miles above the level of the 
sea. Snow lies constantly on its 
sides 12000 of these feet. The sum¬ 
mit is a narrow ridge, like the roof 
of a house; its uppermost rocks con¬ 
sist of strata of granite, nearly ver¬ 
tical. De Saussure at the top, on 
the 3d of August, found Fahrenheit 
27°, while at Geneva it was 82°; 
the barometer fell to 16.02, while at 
Geneva it was 27.2 : and the air 
contained six times less humidity 
than at Geneva. Respiration was 
difficult and sounds very feeble; 
and the pulse was increased to 
nearly double. Many perish in at¬ 
tempting to ascend it. To the dry¬ 
ness of the air Saussure ascribed his 
extreme thirst. 

The Caucasian Mountains lie be¬ 
tween the Euxine and the Caspian. 
The story of Prometheus is referred 
to these mountains; and probably 
it arose from the fires at Baku, in 
their vicinity. They are from 3 to 
400 miles long, and about 200 broad, 
consisting chiefly of granite and 
limestone, and their tops are covered 
with snow and ice, the lower parts 
abounding in rich minerals. Elbu- 
rouse, the nighest, is 16800 feet; and 
the people say it is the residence of 
the king of the hobgoblins. The 
valleys are exceedingly fertile, inter¬ 
spersed with noble forests. There 
are also several hot and mineral 
springs of remarkable character. 
Strabo says the inhabitants speak 
seventy languages; and modern 
discovery proves that there are an 
astonishing diversity. Among them 
are the Circassians, called the Ad- 
ege, and the Cossacks, so effective 
in the Russian army. The whole 
tract is now absorbed in the Russian 
empire. 

The Altai Mountains are 5000 miles 
in length, in Siberia, and often as 
high as the Alps. 

The Dofrine mountains in Scan¬ 
dinavia run from 8000 feet to 6000, 
but are chiefly remarkable for the 
richest mines in Europe. 

The Carpathian mountains in Hun¬ 
gary are 4 or 5000 feet high, and con¬ 
tain the richest known copper 


_103 

mines as well as iron, lead, gold. 

and silver. 

The Appenines are from 4000 to 
6000 feet high, and covered with 
woods and pastures to their summits. 
Large tracts of the valleys are very 
fertile, but others emit sulphureous 
vapours, and have become desolate, 
owing to the cupidity of the great 
land proprietors, who in past ages 
demanded higher rents than the 
farmers could pay. 

The peak of Teneriffe presents five 
zones of different vegetation: for 7 
or 800 feet it produces vines, corn, 
olives, &c.; the second zone produces 
myrtles and trees, the third chiefly 
pines, the fourth and fifth produce 
little vegetation and are very cold; 
the upper part is covered with pum¬ 
ice stones and lava. In the middle 
is a cone, and on the top of it a cra¬ 
ter 300 feet long and 200 broad, and 
of evident antiquity, such that Hum¬ 
boldt conceived it had not been in 
action for some thousand years. 
The whole mountain appeared to be 
volcanick, and its recent eruptions 
have been made from the sides. 

The highest peak' of the Rocky 
mountain is 12500 feet, and James’s 
Peak is 12000 feet. Mount Wash¬ 
ington in New Hampshire is 6634 
feet. 

The European mountains consist 
of primitive and transition rocks. 

Mount Carmel, so often referred to 
in the Jewish histories, is the high¬ 
est of several mountains in its 
vicinity. The valley of Sharon lies 
to the south of it, and forms a 
grand promontory in sailing along 
the coast. It is 2000 feet high, shaped 
like a flatted cone, with steep and 
barren sides. There is a chapel on 
it, and some monks called Carmel¬ 
ites. 

Mount Athos in Macedonia, is 
above a mile high and inhabited by 
5 or 6000 Greek monks who have 
twenty-four monasteries on it. 

There are six hills in Scotland 
nearly of the same height; Ben-Nevis 
and Benwyvis, 4380 feet each; Ben- 
macoudie, 4300; Cairngorum, 4060; 
Benlawers, 3978; and Rona, 3944. 

It is thirty miles from the foot of 
Etna to the crater, and the surface 
of the entire mountain is 1900 square 





104 


MOUNTAINS. 


miles. The great crater is ten miles 
round and 400 yards high. Pindar 
called it the pillar of heaven, and 
Deucalion and Pyrrha were said to 
have taken refuge on it to escape the 
deluge. The perpendicular height is 
11000 feet, or rather above two miles. 

Snowdon is 3600 feet above the 
level of the sea, and the promontory 
of Penmaenmawr, at the edge of 
which a road passes, is 1550 feet. 


Height of the hills and mountains, 
by Readel’s scale :— 


Race-course, Brighton 


feet 400 

Monmouth hill • • 


450 

Arthur’s seat • 


800 

Dunsinnan • • • 


1030 

Edgecombe • • • 


1300 

Malvern • • • . 


1350 

Wrikin .... 


1450 

Penmaenmawr • 


1460 

Gibraltar .... 


1470 

Pentland .... 


1600 

Three Brethren • • 


2000 

Sion. 


2100 

Vaucluse .... 


2150 

Inglebrough • 


2280 

Wharnsiae • * • 


2500 

Cheviot 


2670 

Sinai 


3000 

Saddleback • • • 

Schehalhien, Skiddaw, 

, and 

3080 

Ben Lomond • 
Montserrat, Athos, 

and 

3280 

Hartfell .... 


3300 

Helvellyn 


3350 

Snowdon, Table, at Cape • 

3500 

Stromboli • • • 


3850 

Vesuvius • • 


3900 

Parnassus 


3950 

Ben Lawers • 


4030 

Ben-Nevis • • • 


4400 

Soufriere • • • • 


4830 

Hecla .... 


4900 

Puy de Dome 


5200 

Port des Francois • 


5760 

Col de Tende 


6100 

Stony Mountains • 


6450 

Olympus .... 
Simplon .... 


6500 

6600 

Cenis. 


6800 

Rouge .... 


7650 

Santa Fe ... 


8700 

Pilate. 


8950 

St. Gothard • 


9080 

Carnigou, Pic du Midi. 


9300 

Parmesan 


10090 

Buet. 


10120 

Pic Blanc • • • 


10400 

Etna. 


10950 

Perdu. 


11200 


Hochhorn 
Egmont • • • 

Atlas and New Zealand 
Argentiere 
Teneriffe • • • 

St. Elias • • • 

Ophir ... 

Ortel • • • 

Dome de Gonte 
Southern Thule 

Rosa. 

Pichincha 

Blanc . 

Tartarian • • ■ 

Cotocache • • 

El Altar and Hinica 
Cotopaxi .... 
Disis Casada and four o 
Chimboraza • • 


hers 


11300 

11440 

12000 

12180 

12250 

12700 

13850 

14400 

15500 

15100 

15550 

15600 

15680 

15800 

16450 

17500 

18900 

19500 

21000 


There are 120 mountains or ridges 
above 10000 feet above the level of 
the sea, and 150 from 5000 to 10000, 
many of them extensive ridges. 

Mont Blanc is 14542 feet above the 
Lake of Geneva, and this 1233 feet 
above the sea. 


Sukanda, in the Himalayas, is 
25500; and Dhawalagiri, in the same 
chain, is 27000 feet, and visible 
above 250 miles. Nineteen of these 
mountains are higher than Chimbo¬ 
razo. 


A village in the Himalayas is 
14700 feet nigh. The goats produce 
the wool for shawls. At 15500 feet 
beds of fossil shells were found. At 
20000 feet there was not perpetual 
snow. They have been ascended 19- 
600 feet. 


The Alps cover 600 square miles. 
They are divided into the maritime, 
the Cottian, the Grecian, the Helve¬ 
tian, the Pennine, the Rhoetian, Car- 
mi, and Julian. The heights are— 

Jungfranhorn . 13739 feet 

Mount Blanc . 15680 

Rosa . 15552 

Cervin . 14784 

Mount Perdu, in the Pyrenees, is 
11270 feet high, and the Sierra Ne¬ 
vada is 11660 feet high. Snow is 
permanent above 8900 feet. 

The Allegany Mountains in New 
Hampshire are 8000 feet, and the 
range is 900 miles. They consist of 
granite, slate, and limestone, filled 
with organick remains. 

Mount Ararat is 16200 feet. 

On the Brocken, the highest of the 
Hartz Mountains, a spectre is seen, 

























MOUNTAINS. 


105 


of which superstition has made a 

profitable use, and formerly there 
was a temple on it; and to this day 
there is the sorcerer’s chain, the ma- 
gick fountain, and the sorcerer’s ane¬ 
mone. The spectre is seen in the 
afternoon, when the sun, at a certain 
height, projects the shadow of the 
spectator on any clouds or mists in 
the atmosphere. His image is thus 
seen several hundred feet high; and 
all his motions are displayed by the 
non-reflection. 

The mountains of Seger, in Ara¬ 
bia, produce frankincense; and those 
of Safra, the balm of Mecca, from the 
■amyris opobasamum, which in the 
early ages sold for its weight in gold. 

The Steppes, in Asia, consist of 
extensive tracts nearly level, and 
without trees; the soil sandy, and 
serving the Tartars to graze their 
flocks and horses. Those near the 
Black Sea afford abundance of salt, 
a proof that it formerly exceeded its 
present size. 

There are on mountains perpetual 
snow levels, at the following heights. 

On the Andes, lat. 2 .14760 feet 

Mexico, lat. 19 .13800 

Teneriffe.no snow at 11454 

Etna... 9000 

Caucasus. 9900 

Pyrenees. 8400 

Alps .. 8220 

Iceland. 2890 

Lapland. 3100 

On Chimborazo,the upper 5400 feet 
is perpetual snow. 

The Himalayas have perpetual 
snow. 

One of the most remarkable pre-; 
cipices is at Table Mountain, in 
South Carolina. It is 3000 feet high, j 
and stands on the edge of a valley, 
which nearly doubles its perpendi¬ 
cular elevation. Near it is a cata¬ 
ract which falls 6 or 700 feet. In the 
plains around, a strata of shells, 
beds of oyster shells, and petrified 
fish, are found in great abundance. 
There are also found enormous bones 
of unknown animals, the ribs of 
which are six feet long, the teeth 
above eight inches, three and a half 
wide, and nearly a foot in the root. 

Though the Caspian Sea is remote 
from every other, yet the water is 
salt, and abounds in fish, and the 
usual marine productions. 


There are, in different parts of the 
earth’s surface, above 200 volcanoes, 
which have been active in modern 
times. Their products, in mdny 
countries, prove that in certain states 
of the earth they must have been 
more numerous. When the fermenta¬ 
tion is commencing, smoke appears; 
noises are heard; earthquakes take 
place; and explosions of ashes, sand, 
and stone, precede the flow of melt¬ 
ed lava. The smoke consists of 
steam, and carbonick, sulphurick, or 
muriatick gas. The ashes appear to 
be exploded lava, and are often car¬ 
ried by the wind 1 or 200 miles. 
Thick accumulations of them form a 
compact stone, called tufa; the sco¬ 
ria is like the slag of iron furnaces. 
The explosive force is such as some¬ 
times to throw stones of 1 or 200 
tons eight or nine miles. Lava is a 
stony substance like basalt, and may 
sometimes be seen at the bottom of 
a crater red hot, like melted metal, 
bubbling like a fountain. When it 
overflows the crater it is very fluid. 
At Vesuvius, a red hot current of it 
was from eight to ten yards deep, 2 
or 300 yards broad, and nearly a mile,,, 
long. Mount Hecla, in 1783, threw 
up a current of burning lava, sixty 
miles long and fifteen broad. In 
Mexico, a plain was filled up by it 
Into a mountain 1G00 feet high, by 
an eruption in 1759. Its heat is so 
great that it continues to smoke for 
above twenty years afterwards; and 
a piece of wood took fire in lava 3£ 
years after it had been ejected, at 
a distance of five miles from the cra¬ 
ter. Sometimes they throw up mud, 
and produce extensive devastations. 
Black volcanick glass is obsidian. 

Isolated mountains are generally 
volcanoes, as Etna, Teneriffe, & c. 

Granitick mountains are rugged 
and precipitous; gneiss, less so, and 
slate smoGth ana round. The Eu¬ 
ropean and Asiatick mountains are 
crowned with granite; but the An¬ 
des are crowned with whinstone, or 
the newest floetz trap: and granite 
does not rise higher than 10 or 12000 
feet. Chimborazo has porphyry at 
its summit, and Pichinca basalt. 
Limestone is also found at great ele¬ 
vations. 

Most mountains present their pre¬ 
cipitous faces to the sea. and their 
slopes to the land. 












106 


GEOLOGY. 


GEOLOGY. 

The surface of the earth is 196862- 
256 square miles; and its solidity is 
259726936416 cubick miles. 

The sea is to the land, in round 
millions of square miles, as 160 to 
40, or as four to one. 

The earth is, according to different 
measurements, 7912, 7916, and 7924 
miles in diameter; and about 24860 
or 24880 miles round. 

Mathematicians have not agreed 
about the exact proportions of the 
earth’s equatorial and polar diame¬ 
ter. Huygens made it 578 to 577. 
Newton made it 230 to 220. Bou- 
guer 179 to 178. Others make it 266 
to 265; and La Place makes it 334 to 
333; Maupertius and Bernoulli 129 
to 128. 

Bodies are lighter at the equator 
than towards the poles, owing to the 
spherical figure, and to the cosines 
not shortening so much as the sines 
increase; the former being the cen¬ 
trifugal and the latter the centripetal 
force directed to the equatorial plane. 
But Newton ascribed it to bodies 
being nearer the centre at the pole, 
than at the equator. * 

Those of the ancients who did not 
believe in the sphericity of the earth, 
thought it a cylinder, or an extended 
plane. Homer made it circular, and 
the outside water, and this was the 
idea of the Jews. The later Greeks 
from Pythagoras and Thales taught 
the sphericity. But the popes be¬ 
lieved it a plain, giving all to the west 
to the kings of Spain. 

The Regent’s park is about one 
cubick mile. Now, suppose a pillar, 
the base of which is the same size, 
and about thirty times higher than 
St. Paul’s dome; this pillar would 
be about one square mile, and about 
250 thousand millions of these pil¬ 
lars would be nearly equal to the 
whole earth. 

The original surface of the earth is 
supposed, by Werner, to have been 
granite, with pinnacles or deep cavi¬ 
ties and hollows; and that then the 
gneiss, &c. was generated from it; 
and the other strata, one above the 
other, from the remains of each, with 
frequent intermixtures. Others sup¬ 
pose the gneiss, mica-slate, and clay- 
slate to be as old as the granite, and 


to be arranged and iapped over each 

other like the scales of a fish. Pro¬ 
cesses of waste, decay, separation, 
and combination, appear to have re¬ 
sulted from the continued action of 
air, heat, water, and central force. 
It appears that the older secondary 
formations consist of the very sub¬ 
stances of the primary re-united by 
cement, while their debris again con¬ 
stitute the newer secondary; and 
the ruins of quartz rocks form sand¬ 
stone and loose sand; and the ruins 
of slate and trap rocks, beds of clay. 
Such is the general source of the 
silicious and argillaceous earths which 
cover the earth; the detailed study 
of which constitutes the extensive 
sciences of mineralogy and geology. 

Taking the land on the globe at 
160 the surface of the sea is forty, 
and seven twelfths are in the south¬ 
ern hemisphere, the water being to 
the land as thirteen to two, ana in 
the northern hemisphere as seven to 
five. The mean depth of the ocean 
is calculated by La Place and others 
at two miles, and its cubick contents 
at 290 millions of miles. The Paci- 
fick ocean covers 88 millions of 
square miles, the Atlantick 25000000, 
the Indian ocean 17 millions. The 
southern ocean to forty or fifty de¬ 
grees is 30 millions, the Mediterra¬ 
nean one million, the Black Sea 
170000, the Baltic 175000, the North 
Sea 160000, the Persian Gulf is 600 
miles long, and the Red Sea is 1500 
miles, without a river. 

The surface of the sea is estimated 
at 150 millions of square miles, taking 
the whole surface of the globe at 197 
millions, and its greatest depth is 
supposed to be equal to that of the 
highest mountains, or four miles; 
but La Place thinks that the tides 
demand an average depth of three 
miles, therefore, the sea would con¬ 
tain 450 million of cubick miles. 

The quantity of water discharged 
into the sea by all the rivers in the 
world is about 36 cubick miles in a 
day, hence it would take above 30000 
years to create a circuit of the whole 
sea through clouds and rivers. 

The sea continues to encroach on 
the Cornish coast. Mount’s Bay 
and St. Ive’s are expected to meet, 
and place Penzance on an island. 
Scilly anciently joined the Land’s 
End, and St. Michael’s Mount has 





GEOLOGY. 


not been an island for many centu¬ 
ries. 

Rivers are a beautiful part of the 
harmony of Nature. The sea rises 
in fresh vapours, it falls in rain, fer¬ 
tilizing the ground, and returns by 
the lowest levels to the sea again, 
forming a channel in the soil; and 
when the fall is not sufficient, lakes 
more or less extensive, and courses 
more or less devious as the land is 
hilly or plain, are formed. 

Rivers and tides produce silent but 
great changes in the forms of land, 
and they flow in the lowest levels, 
but overflowing and contracting, 
they soon form decided channels by 
raising the banks with mud and ve¬ 
getation. Sometimes their course 
is interrupted, and they form lakes 
which enlarge till they overflow, and 
hence cataracts. The St. Lawrence 
is an example of these circum¬ 
stances. 

The mud of large rivers extends 
continents at their debouches ; the 
subsiding mud forms deltas of low¬ 
lands which in time unite with the 
main land and form the plains. The 
Amazons, the Oronaoko, the Missis¬ 
sippi, the Nile, the Danube, the Wol- 
ga, and the Ganges all have islands 
at their mouths, and the sea is muddy 
for a great distance. The Mississippi 
adds 300 feet per annum to the main 
land from this cause; the Nile has 
advanced the land sixteen feet per 
annum since the time of Herodotus, 
and has raised the surface of Egypt 
four inches in a century. The Po 
carries out the land 228 feet per an¬ 
num, and consequently Adrea, which 
2500 years ago was upon the sea, is 
now twenty miles from it The Yel¬ 
low river in China carries down two 
millions of cubick feet per hour of al¬ 
luvium, so as to be likely to fillup 
the Yellow sea. The Nile begins to 
rise in June, and attains twenty-four 
to twenty-eight feet of elevation 
in the middle of August, and then 
floods the valley of Egypt twelve 
mi^es w'ide. The Ganges rises from 
April till August thirty-two feet, and 
then creates a flood 100 miles wide. 
The Euphrates rises between March 
and June twelve feet and covers the 
Babylonian plains. The Mississippi 
rises with the melting of the snows 
from March till June, and forms 
breadths of rapid water of vast ex¬ 


107 

tent. At the distance of 1000 miles 
from the sea, it. rises fifty feet and 
by spreading over a large tract rises 
only twenty-five at 300 miles, and 
twelve feet at 100 miles. 

Corals and their operations are 
the most extraordinary species of ex¬ 
istence known to us. Their vast fa- 
bricks in the sea are produced by the 
unity of action, though each animal 
lives a solitaire in its own solid shell. 
Yet the chief part of their structure 
is a common wall, to protect their 
community from the usual swell of 
the ocean. They consist chiefly of 
madrapores, while other shell fish 
congregate on and near their struc¬ 
tures. One reef, on the coast of 
New Holland, in fathomless seas, 
extends 1000 miles long and from 
40 to 50 broad : one vast mass of 
limestone, likely ere long to be dry 
and fertile land. They are supposed 
not to work above the water, though 
their rocks are found from 100 to 
300 feet above the level of the sea. 

The numerous islands on the coast 
of Norway generate currents, and 
one of them called Maelstrom, runs 
between some islands six hours from 
north to south, and six the contrary. 
Against the tide and in stormy wea¬ 
ther, it is fatal to navigators, and 
even to whales. At high and low 
water, and in summer, it may be 
crossed without danger. 

The vast tract of land between the 
Andes and the Atlantick is so level, 
that in 300 miles the river Paraguay 
does not fall above a foot. Three 
rivers fall into an estuary of fresh 
water, called the Rio de la Plata ; 
which at is efflux, is 150 miles broad, 
and 3fi miles over, opposite Buenos 
Ayres. At 200 miles distance, it re¬ 
ceives several rivers besides the Pa¬ 
raguay, and this receives the Parana 
ana Aruguay, which run to the 
Andes. 

The country near the Oronooko 
and its tributary streams, is flooded 
in the rainy season to a vast extent; 
and the Oronooko near its mouth, 
expands over the land in June, July, 
and August, 5 or 600 miles. 

The narrowest part of the At¬ 
lantick is more than two miles deep. 
In other parts it is about one and a 
half mile. 

The remains of animals and vege- 





108 


GEOLOG i r . 


tables in the rocks and earthy strata 
of the earth., are the true and only 
means of ascertaining its history and 
: natural changes before the records 
of man. The discoveries made on 
this subject within the last half cen¬ 
tury form an era in science in which 
the name of Cuvier will always be 
distinguished. In all countries, on 
digging to certain depths, and in 
mining, the remains of fishes, vege¬ 
tables, quadrupeds, and birds are 
found in the soil or imbedded in the 
rocks, except in those of primitive 
antiquity. The general regularity 
with which those that are marine 
are laid at one level, and those which 
are products of land are laid at 
another, and the alternations of these 
marine and land products, lead to 
the conclusion that the sea has re¬ 
peatedly covered the land for long 
eriods of time, and that the land 
as, at intermediate periods, been 
dry; and v/hat is very remarkable, 
the remains found consist, and al¬ 
ways at certain depths, of species of 
animals, vegetables, &c. not now in 
existence, and often of genera not 
natural to the present climate. Cu¬ 
vier has enumerated several hun¬ 
dred genera of animals, fishes, and 
vegetables so found, of which there 
are none of the living genera or spe¬ 
cies. The lowest rocks, it is there¬ 
fore inferred, were at one time the 
surface of the earth and the seat of 
organick life. These appear to have 
been destroyed by some great revo¬ 
lutions which brought new tribes of 
organized beings, while their kinds 
prove that the surface was covered 
with water. The subsequent ap¬ 
pearance of amphibia, &c. prove the 
development of dry land ; these ap¬ 
pear to have been swept away, and 
among later solid rocks, the mon¬ 
strous race of herbiverous quadrupeds 
and gigantick lacerta came into ex¬ 
istence when the earth seems to 
have acquired herbage for their sub¬ 
sistence. How long this race kept 
possession cannot be guessed, but 
their length of life is well known. 
The gypsum, &c. which now contains 
their remains is covered with newer 
deposits, abounding in sea shells, 
and above the stratum is found a new 
race of herbiverous animals of the 
genera of the elephant, rhinoceros, 
&c. and above them is the first loose 
soil, intermixed with marine sub¬ 


stances, proving second or third im¬ 
mersions of the sea; and above this 
lies the soil which the present race 
of animals enjoy. What may fol¬ 
low, and when, and how, is a curi¬ 
ous question. 

The age of the rocks indicates the 
age of the remains, but we can mea¬ 
sure neither by any comparison with 
known time. 

The older secondary rocks con¬ 
tain peculiar aquatick plants and 
reeds, then above these madrepores, 
corals, &c. all fixed where they 
lived; then shell-fish, very simple, 
but differing from all now in exist¬ 
ence; in strata above these fishes, 
bamboos and ferns; in a still higher 
stratum are more complicate shells 
and oviparous amphibia, as croco¬ 
diles, tortoises, and reptiles ;• these 
are imbedded in the uppermost solid 
rocks of the oldest secondary forma¬ 
tion. 

In the newest solid rock forma¬ 
tions, whales, seals, and birds ap*- 
pear; above these land animals of 
enormous size, birds and fresh water 
shells, all in concrete rocks. 

Above these, in the lowest beds of 
loose soil and peat bogs, elephants, 
elks, rhinoceroses, of peculiar spe¬ 
cies are found. Near the surface i3 
found the remains of the existing 
races. Human bones have only been 
found among these. 

It hasbeensuggested that all these 
phenomena of the surface of the 
earth (for to the depth that man pe¬ 
netrates is to be regarded as surface) 
are occasioned by the oblique and 
eccentrick motions of the earth as a 
planet, and of its varied reactions in 
connexion with the forces which 
produce the motions. The different 
distance in the perihelion and aphe¬ 
lion, which points progress round the 
ecliptick in every 20900 years, is one 
of the chief causes; the difference of 
reaction at the two distances being 
effected by the mobile waters; ana 
greatest, and therefore most accu¬ 
mulating, being in the hemisphere 
over which the perihelion is acting. 
At present, and for 6000 years, the 
perihelion has been vertical over the 
southern hemisphere, and to this 
cause is ascribed the vast prepon¬ 
derance of water in the southern 
• hemisphere and the draining of the 





109 


GEOLOGY. 


northern hemisphere at and since 
that epoch. Another general cause 
is the variable obliquity of the eclip- 
tick, by which the tropicks are at 
present narrowing at the rate of 52 
seconds in a century; a motion which 
it is supposed may be accelerated at 
times by the other cause and by the 
variable disposition of the dry land. 

A bat has been found in limestone, 
opossums in slate, guinea-pigs, rab¬ 
bits, rats, and beavers in limestone: 
the sloth, one fourteen feet long, in 
South America and in limestone 
caves. Bears, dogs, foxes, and wolves 
in diluvial soils and caves; hyaenas 
and tigers in limestone caves and 
marl; the teeth of horses, elephants, 
rhinoceroses, hyaenas, bears, wolves, 
tigers, &c. are found in masses in 
diluvial soils; oxen in peat-bogs in 
several countries; deer and elks in 
eat-bogs and marl-pits, one six feet 
igh and nine feet long was found in 
the Isle of Man, in marl, covered with 
sand, then peat, and then the vege¬ 
table soil. Rhinoceroses are found 
in every part of Europe and in the 
arctick circle ; the hippopotamus is 
found in England, France, and Ger¬ 
many. 

Elephants, and animals much 
larger than elephants, called mam¬ 
moths, have been found in Europe, 
America, and Siberia. One found 
near Abingdon, now at Oxford, is 
sixteen feet high, and its bones were 
mixed with those of other large ani¬ 
mals : another was found in Siberia 
in the ice, quite perfect in its flesh, 
skin, hair, and eyes, with a long 
mane and tail of stiff black bristles ; 
others have been found in Hudson’s 
Bay. The gigantick mastadori is 
found in North America and Siberia. 
The gigantick tapir, twelve feet high 
and eighteen feet long, has been 
found in different parts of Europe. 
Whales are found in Essex, in Lon¬ 
don clay, and in Bath limestone. 

The fossil or organick remains in 
strata are always the same kind in 
similar strata, and generally have 
characters of simplicity of structure, 
proportioned to the age or depth of 
the stratum. According to Kirwan, 
petrifactions or fossil remains are 
found in marl, chalk, limestone, or 
clay; seldom in sandstone, and rare¬ 
ly in gypsum; never in gneiss, gra¬ 
nite, basalt, or shorle: but some¬ 


times in pyrites and ores. They are 
impregnated with the species of 
earth in which they are formed 
Those in slate or clay are compressed 
and flattened. 

In the oldest limestones are found 
worms, tubipores, millepores, belim- 
nites, ammonites, nautilites. 

In argillaceous schists of primary 
formation are found the same, and 
corallites, echinites, fishes, leaves, 
reeds, palms, &c. 

In the lowest secondary sandstone 
are found the preceding with ortlio- 
ceratites, and pectinites. 

In the secondary limestone below 
coal are found the same with gri- 
phites, ostracites, buccinites, &c. 

The coal above the preceding evi¬ 
dently consists of bitumenized tim¬ 
ber, with leaves and shell and 
branches of shrubs lying upon the 
beds, and shells, &c. in the shale be¬ 
tween the beds. 

Red marl or sandstone contains 
all the preceding, together with crabs 
and amphibia, and fishes. 

The strata between the preceding 
and chalk contain every variety of 
shells and zoophites. 

Chalk abounds in fossil remains 
like the preceding, with sponges, 
primites, tortoises, and parts of fishes 
Above the chalk the lowest marine 
limestone, and two other strata above 
it, contain similar remains, with 
leaves of fuci; and the sandstone 
above is similar. 

Gypsum, the lowest fresh water 
formation, contains various large 
animals of the genus paloeothera, 
canis, anoplothera, saurus, &e. be¬ 
sides birds, fishes and palms. 

Above the gypsum is a marine 
formation of gypsum and marl, con¬ 
taining marine shells, crabs, and 
fishes. 

The upper sandstone contains va¬ 
rious marine shells of a dozen ge¬ 
nera. 

Above this is another fresh water 
formation containing various ani¬ 
mals with silicified wood, and re¬ 
mains of crocodiles, turtles, lobsters, 
sharks’ teeth, and branches of trees 
with fruit. 

Chalk also contains marine sub- 
I stances, from the sponge to the alii- 





110 


GEOLOGY. 


gator ; and clay contains crabs and 
lobsters, shells, fishes, crocodiles, 
fruit, fossil wood, and seed-vessels 
of woods in great varieties. Dilu¬ 
vial rocks contain elephants, &c. 
Below chalk the remains are marine; 
but chalk and the coal formation and 
upwards contain marine and land 
remains. The upper old formations 
contain the larger animals, and the 
alluvial and newest strata, subjects 
with which we are familiar. 

One hundred genera of multivalve 
and vivalve shells have been disco¬ 
vered, and of some of them there are 
■ hundreds of species. Eighty genera 
of bivalves are also enumerated, be¬ 
sides thirteen genera of zoophytes. 
Most of the shells are of genera no 
longer in existence, and their forms, 
often gigantick, create astonishment 
in the most listless. Ammonites 
alone form some hundred species 
from a diameter of four or five feet 
to aggregated millions of a few 
pounds. 

Cuvier establishes thirty-six new 
genera of fossil quadrupeds now un¬ 
known, besides uncertain ones, and 
forty-nine species. He thinks the 
oviparous animals were more an¬ 
cient than the viviparous, that they 
might have been contemporaneous 
with the more ancient fishes, but that 
quadrupeds and mammiferous ani¬ 
mals were far more recent. 

Several immense basins of rock 
have been discovered, which are now 
filled up and level, as the Paris ba- I 
sin, that of the Isle of Wight, and 
that from Sheepy to Reading, on 
which London stands. First, there 
is a marine stratum in them on chalk, 
of sand and clay with shells ; the 
next stratum is fresh water deposits; 
the third marine, the fourth fresh wa¬ 
ter, and then over thi3 are alluvial 
deposits. The basins are 500 feet 
deep, and below them are limestone, 
marl, sandstone, chert, and shale, 
all containing marine shells. The 
lowest of the fresh water contains 
palm-trees, amphibia, quadrupeds, 
and birds. The third contains fishes 
and crabs, and covers the second 
with marl, sandstone, and quartz, of 
the kind called millstone. The fourth 
contains fresh water shells and ve¬ 
getables. The alluvial contains va¬ 
rious strata, and remains of ele¬ 
phants, trees, and many large un¬ 


known animals, and on this lies the 

soil of the surface. 

Mount Bolca, near Verona, pre¬ 
sents the most numerous specimens 
in Oryctology which have yet been 
found in one place. Bones of ele¬ 
phants, stags, bears, and phocse, 200 
genera of unknown testacea—200 
species of petrified shells, belonging 
to different modern seas and climates, 
with zoophytes of different genera, 
and remains of birds and insects are 
found in immense masses, basaltick 
columns, scoriae, lava, &c. appear, 
the whole proving that fire and water 
have operated in remote ages. 

The remains of land animals are 
not more remarkable at Mount Balca 
than those of marine productions, 
for the fishes of all modern seas and 
rivers are imbedded in the calcareous 
quarries, a sort of marly schist of a 
light gray colour, affording a foetid 
odour like putrefaction. In general 
they are perfect, and not mere im¬ 
pressions; there have been ninety- 
four species found, one three feet m 
length, and a young shark with its 
food undigested in tne stomach, and 
another fish has one half swallowed 
in its throat. Fish of the Japanese 
seas, others of rivers in India, and 
some peculiar to fresh water lakes, 
while many of the specimens belong 
to genera and species no longer in 
existence. Marine plants are im¬ 
printed on the stones, and among the 
remains of birds a petrified quill has 
| been found. To account for the va¬ 
rieties, it has been supposed either 
that a volcano increased the tempe¬ 
rature of the surrounding sea, or that 
the gulf of a volcano may itself com¬ 
municate with the sea, and the fish 
be involved, for it appears that fish 
are frequently thrown in prodigious 
numbers from craters of burning vol¬ 
canoes. An apothecary at Verona 
lately possessed a cabinet containing 
600 fishes of different sizes extracted 
from Bolca, and the Marquis Douisi 
had 800 specimens, many of extra¬ 
ordinary size. For further details 
and arguments on this very curious 
subject, the reader may consult the 
article Bolca, in Brewster’s Cyclo¬ 
pedia. 

Brogniart, in his Geological Flo¬ 
ra, classes plants into four periods: 
1, The transition and coal forma¬ 
tions; 2, Variegated sandstone; 3, 







GEOLOGY. 


Ill 


The chalk; and 4, Above the chalk. 

He conceives that the successive 
creations are distinguished by a sud¬ 
den change in the essential charac- 
teristicks. Those of the fourth period 
are similar to the present. Below 
the chalk the most perfect are the 
cycadecc and conifera. A land ve¬ 
getation marks each period, while 
one family of one period runs into 
another. The dicotyledonons begin 
in the oldest strata of the secondary 
formations, and increase in the more 
recent. 

Eight species of birds are found in 
gypsum, near Paris. Crocodiles are 
found in blue clay in Dorsetshire, 
and on the opposite French coast. 

Lizards, twenty-four feet long, 
equal to the dragons of antiquity, are 
found at Maestricht, and in Bavaria. 

Lizards found at'Stonefield must 
have been forty feet long and eight 
feet high. Fossil fishes occur every 
where, and in all forms. Crabs are 
numerous, as well as other shell¬ 
fish. 

Insects are found in slate, and flies 
and ants in amber; and a perfect 
scorpion was found in a piece of am¬ 
ber. 

70 genera of univalve shells have 
been discriminated; and other shells 
are so numerous and novel as to fill 
large books with their descriptions. 
Their masses are so great, that many 
have supposed that the vast moun¬ 
tains of limestone are formed of 
their remains. 

Marbles are composed for the 
most part of them, and in many 
kinds the forms are perfect. They 
are found at every depth which has 
been penetrated, and under beds of 
stone a thousand feet thick. 

In France, at 100 miles from the 
sea, a single oyster bed was found, 
which, in oysters and other marine 
bodies, is equal to 500 millions of 
cubick yards. 

Sharks’ teeth and fishes’ teeth 
abound in Oxfordshire. 

Fossil shells are found in moun¬ 
tains every where; and they abound 
in the stones of which the Egyp¬ 
tian, Grecian, and Roman structures 
are formed. 

Miners are familiar with a pro¬ 
digious variety of vegetables, none 


of them like the plants of the present 
country. Remains of plants and 
tropical plants are found in England, 
and all over Europe. 

Forests of standing trees have 
been discovered in Yorkshire and in 
Ireland, imbedded in stone. 

Shells, bones, teeth, and various 
vegetables, are scarcely altered. In 
other cases their impressions remain 
on the stones ; but more commonly 
their substance is penetrated witn 
earthy matter, and they are incor¬ 
porated with the stone. They first 
appear in the transition class of 
rocks, and in them thei\ forms are 
the most simple. Those'in the old¬ 
est rocks, as limestone and slate, are 
chiefly molusca, as corals, ammon¬ 
ites, nautilites, &c. while vegetables 
seldom occur, except reeds and ferns. 

In mountain limestone and red 
sandstone, the above are found, and 
more numerous vegetables. The coal 
formations abound in cacti palms, 
reeds, and ferns; the magnesian 
limestone, which rests on coal, con¬ 
tains numerous fish and amphibia. 

The second sandstone contains 
both trees and shells. Lias and vo- 
lite abound in bivalve-shells, spines 
of fishes, and bones of turtles, cro¬ 
codiles, opossums, and fossil woods, 
besides ferns and reeds. 

Fossil bones of the great masta- 
don, and other animals, have been 
discovered in the Birman Empire. 

Fossil remains on the Ohio prove 
that it was once covered by the sea. 

Caves full of bones of bears, hy¬ 
aenas, &c. have been found in Kent, 
in France, Yorkshire, Franconia, 
Italy, Somersetshire, &c. 

On the descent of a sandstone 
rock, near Lochmaben, now hard, 
but then soft, there have been found, 
for forty or fifty yards, four tracks of 
animals, distinctly marked in un¬ 
interrupted continuity, with regular 
alternations of right and left foot and 
the heel and toes; supposed in one 
case to be the tortoise or crocodile: 
and the most distinct were on rocks 
sixty or seventy feet below the 
modern surface. 

Under the ruins of an ancient 
town, near Modena, standing trees 
have been found, beneath these beds 
of shells, and beneath these vegeta¬ 
ble remains. Ancient authors, Greek 






GEOLOGY. 


112 

and Roman, speak of many such 
discoveries in their time. 

Trees are often found in Lapland 
and Siberia converted into iron ore 
and carbonate of copper. Lignites 
are petrified trees, in a state between 
peat and coals. 

The most acute modern geologists 
agree in opinion that the vast beds 
of secondary limestone, and most of 
the secondary calcareous strata have 
been the production of shell fish and 
corals; and are distinct from the 
granite, gneiss, and their silicious 
and argillaceous ruins, which com¬ 
pose other strata. 

Two caves full of bones have late¬ 
ly been discovered in France, and 
in one of them remains of rude pot¬ 
tery. 

Insects are found perfect in amber 
and copal, which must have been of 
great antiquity. They afford new 
genera and species. 

In the 13th and 14th century the 
face of Scotland, according to Tyt- 
ler, was covered with immense for¬ 
ests of oak, filled with deer. Inver¬ 
ness, Elgin, Aberdeen, &c. &c. were 
covered with wood; and Stirling 
and Perth had extensive, royal for¬ 
ests. The remains of large trees, of 
oaks, ash, beech, &c. are constantly 
found deep under the surface. Bears, 
wolves, wild boars, and bisons also 
abounded in them. Bears were ex¬ 
tirpated in the 13th, and wolves in 
the 17th century. Beavers also 
abounded in the lochs. 

In St. Andrew’s Cathedral, used 
to be shown the remains of a wild 
boar, with tusks sixteen inches long 
and four thick. 

Wood is found in Languedoc, part 
jet, part wood; and trees have been 
found converted into jet, but so en¬ 
tire as to distinguish tneir species, as 
walnut and beach. 

In Zetland, twenty-four feet be¬ 
low the level of the sea dyke, there 
have been found turf, old alder, and 
other trees. 

It is supposed that the bones of 
apparent birds, found at Stonesfield, 
&c. are pterodactyles, or extinct spe¬ 
cies of flying reptiles. 

Ink bags, like those in the cuttle 
fish, are found in the lias at Lyme. 

The bezoar stones found at Lyme, 


in lias, are the faeces of the ichthyo¬ 
saurus. They resemble pebbles or 
long potatoes. 

The dung of the sea-bird, the 
guana, on the coast of Peru, is a 
stratum fifty or sixty feet in thick¬ 
ness, somewhat similar to fossil co- 
prolites. 

The strata, near Reading, consists 
of a deep bed of clay, three feet of 
coarse fuller’s earth, four feet of 
green sand, one and a half foot of 
sandy clay, two feet of oyster shells, 
one foot of sandy clay, thirty feet of 
chalk, and a bed of flint. In other 
places, fossil, shells, sharks’ teeth, 
remains of fish, are found; and in 
others, bones of animals, and re¬ 
mains of birch trees. 

On the shores of the Mersey, at 
Liverpool, at nineteen feet, was 
found fine sea sand; then a firm blu¬ 
ish marl intermixed with lichen, 
fibres, and leaves; then branches of 
trees; then trunks and roots of oaks, 
firs, &c., then marl, and at thirty 
feet a pair of stag’s horns; then 
black peat, with nut-shells, fibres of 
timber, &c. a foot thick, resting on 
the rock forty feet below the quay, 
and twenty below the level of the 
pool. 

Bullock describes a fossil lizard 
150 feet long. 

Ammonites, a univalve shell, is a 
very common organick remain, but 
not in existence as a living genus. 

The molar tooth of a mammoth 
weighs 8 lb.; and the knob of the 
bone of the leg is a foot in diameter. 
It was a carnivorous animal, and the 
Indians have traditions of their ter¬ 
rible devastations. 

A whole mammoth was found in 
1806 imbedded within ice near the 
mouth of the Lena. It was nine 
feet high, and its horns weighed 400 
lbs. The skeleton is now at Peters- 
burgh. 

Giant’s hones 17, 18, 20, and 30 
feet high are credibly reported to 
have been found; but there is now 
no doubt but they were organick re¬ 
mains of colossal quadrupeds. 

In 1821 the bones of an enormous 
mammoth were found near Roches¬ 
ter. 

Madrepore rocks are found in the 




GEOLOGY. 


113 


West India Islands on the highest 
primitive mountains. 

There are beds of sea shells 2000 
feet high, on Etna, and strata of 
gray clay, filled with shells much 
Higher. The base is lava and ma¬ 
rine substances in alternate layers; 
and beneath a stratum of lava is a 
stratum of rounded pebbles, while 
above it are calcareous eminences 
formed by the sea. A Sicilian canon 
who examined some of the beds of 
lava, separated by rich soils, has cal¬ 
culated that at least 14000 years 
have passed during their formation. 

Thirty one great eruptions have 
occurred within the records of an¬ 
cient history. Stones of immense 
size rise to the height of 7000 feet, 
and others fall 100 miles distant. 

Volcaniek action does not consist 
in the combustion of beds of coal, 
but in terrestrial operations seated 
deep under the oldest formations; 
ana hot springs in Germany issue 
from gneiss, granite, and clay slate. 

The Giant’s Causeway is an as¬ 
semblage of basaltick or volcaniek 
columns a mile in extent. 

The site of ancient Rome is on 
volcaniek products, covering a marine 
formation. 

At the Lisbon earthquake, Bristol 
Hot Wells became red. A well in 
King’s Wood became black, and the 
Avon flowed back while rising. 

Rounded pebbles are broken frag¬ 
ments of rocks, rendered smooth by 
mutual attritions, in long time, by 
water and tides. 

The land in the northern is to that 
in the southern hemisphere as 16 to 
5. The length of the old continent, 
taken from Behring’s Straits to Cape 
Verd is 11000 miles, and from Cape 
Horn to Melville’s Island is 9000. 

The Amazon fall but a foot in 50 
miles, or the Rhine one foot in a 
quarter of a mile, the Loire .a foot in 
1£ mile. 

Fossil shells have been found on 
the top of the Pyrenees, and from 10 
to 12000 on the Andes. 

Ninety species of bones of quadru¬ 
peds have been found, which are now 
unknown. 

About 200 active volcanoes are re- 
J 2 


corded, of which 89 are in islands. 
Submarine volcanoes often throw up 
islands. The Azores, the Lipari, the 
Canary Islands, &c. are examples. 
There seems no doubt but the same 
species of gaseous explosions, which 
cause volcaniek eruptions, cause 
earthquakes, and these always ac¬ 
company the activity of volcanoes. 

All volcanoes appear to exist near 
a sea, and, by the matter they eject, 
to have some communication with it. 

Volcanoes and tracts of land are 
often absorbed by the earth, and 
leave lakes in their places. 

Professor Daubeny ascribes earth¬ 
quakes and volcanoes to the access 
of water to the inflammable bases of 
the earths and alkalies, and this 
seems highly probable. When the 
explosion is single or double, and 
confined in a cavernous space, it is 
an earthquake; and when fed and 
supported by water, as in an eleva¬ 
tion, it becomes a volcano. 

A volcano, in 1815, in Sambawa, 
in the Indian Seas, shook the earth 
1000 miles round. It filled the air 
with ashes 300 miles, and roared at 
that distance like thunder. Others, 
as Etna, &c. have been equally terri- 
fick. 

There is a regular current from the 
pole towards the equator, and in low 
latitudes from east to west. This 
general current being embayed in the 
West Indies, begets a returning 
stream called the gulf stream, which 
proceeds between the Bahamas and 
Florida, northward, at the rate of 
three or four miles an hour; and it 
thence passes to Newfoundland, and 
is reflected eastward to the Azores, 
and crosses the Atlantick to the Ca¬ 
naries; and thence joins the general 
current from east to west. Hum¬ 
boldt calculates that the same water 
is nearly three years in making this 
circuit of 10 or 11000 miles. A branch 
of it reaches the western coasts of 
Ireland or Scotland, and often brings 
West India products, wood, &c. 
which even reach Greenland, &c. 

The gulf stream proceeding from 
the Tropicks,may be distinguished by 
its higher temperature. Its breadth 
increases from sixty miles, at lat. 28 
degrees, to 150 at 33 degrees, and at 
40 degrees it is 500 miles. 





114 


GEOLOGY". 


An upper current runs into the 
Mediterranean, and a south runs 
into the Baltic, on the Danish side, 
and a north one out of it on the Swe¬ 
dish side. 

The waters of the Red Sea appear 
to be thirty-two feet higher than the 
Mediterranean, and the Gulf of Mex¬ 
ico is twenty-two or twenty-three 
higher than the Pacifick. 

Sea-water appears to contain from 
3.4 to 4 per cent, of salt. Its specifick 
gravity is 1.028. 

In Icebergs only one-seventh is out 
of the water, and many are seen 200 
feet high. 

Lakes vary in size continually from 
desiccation, and the extinction forms 
basins of organick remains. 

On low coasts, as in the Nether¬ 
lands, and on the sandy mouths of 
rivers, the reaction of tides throws 
up the sand in hills or downs, often 
very high, and always increasing. 

n two attempts to sound the 
Northern Ocean, with lines 1 mile 
and 1| mile long, no bottom could 
be found. 

The sands so much encroach on 
the western side of the Nile, that 
it covers once-flourishing villages, 
whose spires and minarets are visi¬ 
ble through its surface. Probably 
the Oasis of Ammon was once part 
of fertile Egypt. The deluge of sand 
from the African deserts seems as 
fatal to the ancient world, as an ir¬ 
ruption of the ocean, or the lava of a 
volcano, and it spreads with fatal 
certainty. 

In general, the colour of the sea is 
a bluish green, lighter on the coasts. 
In the Mediterranean it has a purple 
tint. In the Gulf of Guinea it is 
white. Near the Maldives it is black, 
and in other places has red and yel¬ 
low tints. Its component parts, 
with very slight variations, are wa¬ 
ter, muriatick’ acid, sulphurick acid, 
mineral alkali, sulphate of lime, and 
magnesia. The freezing point is 28£ 
degrees. 

Springs of fresh water arise in 
most seas, and some on our coasts. 
Near Cuba there are remarkable 
ones. 


The Mediterranean makes a tide of 

only one or two feet. 

That singular natural curiosity, the 
floating island, has emerged from the 
bottom of Derwentwater three times 
in about thirty years. It contains 
about an acre and is quite station¬ 
ary, and is entirely unconnected with 
the bottom and the shore; the soil 
is three yards thick. This floating 
island is not a solitary example. 
There is one at Lake Gerdau, in 
Prussia, and another at Lake Kolk 
in Osnabruck. 

The Caspian is 306 feet lower than 
the Baltic, and 345 lower than the 
Euxine. 

The salt lakes Aral, the Caspian 
and the Baltic were once connected, 
and perhaps the Caspian with the 
Persian Gulf, forming Homer’s cir¬ 
cle of waters, and bounding the then 
known world. Desiccation seems to 
be a cause always operating. 

There can be no doubt but the 
Dutch provinces have wholly been 
formed by the mud of the Rhine, the 
Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Weser. 
So the Delta in Egypt, and perhaps 
all Lower Egypt has been deposited 
in like manner. 

Lake Erie is rapidly filling with 
deposits. The lake of Geneva is con¬ 
tracting, and the lakes in Lincoln¬ 
shire and Cambridgeshire have be¬ 
come dry in our days. The marine 
palace of Canute is now near Ram¬ 
sey, twenty miles from the sea. 
Wales was anciently separated by 
an arm of the sea from the Bristol 
Channel to the estuary of the Dee 
and Mersey. 

Springs are formed by the inter¬ 
vention of Clay and sand strata, the 
former holding water and the latter 
permitting its free passage. So that 
in well-digging, there is no w r ater till 
clay is reacned, or clay is penetrated 
quite through. 

Berzeliqs thinks that all hot springs 
pass near a centre of volcanick ac¬ 
tion, perhaps long extinguished ; he 
also thinks that the hot springs of 
Carlsbad are as old as the rocky 
formations. The river Tepel flows 
over their lid. 


About thirty fresh water springs 
are discovered under the sea on the 
south of the Persian Gulf. 


Two pounds of half-melted basalt 
raises 7 lbs. of water from 11 R. to 
59 R., whence it is concluded that 








GEOLOGY. 


115 


mountains of heated basalt may 
maintain the heat of hot springs for 
many centuries. 

No certain theory is formed on the 
cause of earthquakes, but the most 
general and rational ascribes them to 
steam and the force of gases formed 
by water and metallick oxydes. 

In an eruption that happened in 
the year 1693, the city of Catania 
was overturned in a moment, and 
18000 people perished in the ruins. 

Fourteen earthquakes in different 
parts of the globe, were recorded in 
1827, and jpernaps this is an average 
number. 

In Java, there are apertures in 
the ground which throw up mud in 
spherical masses, and have changed 
the face of their vicinity. 

The Sandwich islands are vol- 
canick, and Owyhee itself is the cone 
of a volcano higher than Mont 
Blanc. 

. There have been twenty-nine de¬ 
structive earthquakes in Calabria 
since 1602, occasioned, as is believ¬ 
ed, by the materials of a pent-up 
volcano, the vapours of which pass 
through the soil in fissures, cracks, 
and chasms. Animals buried under 
the ruins in the earthquake of 1793, 
were taken out alive in thirty or 
forty days and human beings sur¬ 
vived after being buried twelve or 
sixteen. 

In 1687, the sea retired from the 
shores of Peru, and returned in 
mountainous waves which destroyed 
every thing on the coast; among 
other places Callao. In 1746, the 
same phenomenon again took place, 
and only 200 out of 4000 inhabitants 
of Callao saved themselves,—nine 
teen vessels were sunk, and four, in¬ 
cluding a frigate, were carried over 
Callao into the country. 

The Dead Sea or lake of Asphal- 
tites, stands on the ruins of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, which were swal¬ 
lowed by one of those natural con¬ 
vulsions which have often visited 
these countries. It is sixty-five 
miles longand fifteen broad, stronglv 
impregnated with minerals, though 
fish live in it. The specifick gravity 
is 1.24, and it contains 57.4 water, 
24.2 muriate of magnesia, 10.6 of 
lime, and 7.8 of soda. 


Near Linken, in a cave, rock crys¬ 
tals were found which weighed 4, 6 
and 800 cwt. The exudation which 
forms crystals is a very extensive 
mode of rock formation in all varie¬ 
ties. 

The Hindoos have a record trans¬ 
lated by Wilford, describing a great 
churning, as they call it, of the sea, 
near the Hebrides, which lasted for 
months, and produced great changes. 
Perhaps it was a sub-marine volca¬ 
no. The Irish chronicles record the 
separation of the Scilly islands, and 
there can be no doubt but the Eng¬ 
lish channel was formed, and is 
still widening by the tides and floods 
which first opened it. 

The cave of Staffa is made by tho 
destruction of basal tick pillars by the 
sea. It is nearly 400 feet long, and 
30 or 40 broad. 

Bogs in Ireland are remains of fal¬ 
len forests, covered with peat and 
loose soil, often forming hills. The 
quantity of rain in Ireland has added 
to this feature of all countries. 
Moving bogs are slips of these hills 
carried to lower levels by accumu¬ 
lating water. 

It seems, on the evidence of Seit- 
zen, Gray, and Ehrenberg, that a 
sand hill on mount Sinai, called Na- 
kato, by continual falling produces 
remarkable tones, like an JEolian 
harp, a murmuring noise like a dis¬ 
tant cannonade, and greater at cer¬ 
tain times. 

Sand floods are frequent near sea 
shores where the wind carries the 
sand on the beach, and thence over 
the land. In Africa, vast tracts of 
native sand are thus carried over 
adjoining districts and have gradually 
encroached so as to threaten ail 
Egypt with their sterility, having, 
since the Christian era narrowed the 
valley of the Nile as well as the 
northern states of Lybia, Cyrene, 
&c. while the sands of Arabia have 
encroached in central Asia. These 
sands float like waves before the 
wind, and at a distance resemble the 
surface of the sea, while tornadoes 
in them are fatal to travellers. 

The general changes on the earth 
appear to arise from astronomical 
causes, the progression of the line of 
Apsides and the diminution of the 
obliquity; and local changes arise 






HEAT. 


116 _ 

from water in rivers, rain, and tides; 
from accumulated vegetation, from 
decompositions, earthquakes, and 
volcanoes. 


HEAT. 

Heat or varied temperature, and 
its different effects on different sub¬ 
stances, with their varied powers of 
receiving and transmitting it, afford 
not only of themselves prodigious 
number of curious phenomena, but 
are the immediate causes of nearly 
all those phenomena of nature whicn 
are connected with the expansions, 
condensations, changes, and con¬ 
versions of bodies. There can be 
little doubt that heat is itself a mere 
effect of motion, and that various in¬ 
tensities by percussion or motion ap¬ 
plied, transferred to various atoms 
and to various combinations, is the 
cause of all the phenomena of heat. 
Varied exhibitions of heat in different 
bodies, seem to arise entirely from 
that greater or less susceptibility to 
motion of the atoms which compose 
them. If a body displays great heat 
with less excitement, it seems to be 
solely, because the atoms are so 
combined as to be more or less sus¬ 
ceptible of excitement; and if the 
term Calorick is used for heat, it can 
properly be used only in that sense. 

Count Romford, by boring a can¬ 
non within water, so heated it by 
the friction, that he made it boil, 
and actually boiled a piece of beef in 
it. 

Blacksmiths commonly light their 
matches by giving a nail five or six 
strokes with a hammer. Most sav¬ 
age nations produce fire by rubbing 
two dry sticks together. 

In boring cannon within water, the 
temperature ofninequarts, was rais¬ 
ed from 60 to 170 deg. in an hour, 
and in two hours and a half the 
water boiled, the whole heat being 
equal to what would have been pro¬ 
duced by nine wax candles burning 
the same time. 

In strong percussions, the first 
blow produces the greatest heat and 
the greatest change in density; thus, 
in coining copper at 8.85, the first 
stroke renders it 8.89, with an in¬ 
crease of heat of 10 deg., but the 
second stroke makes it only 8.91, 
with 4 deg. of heat. 


Different degrees of excitement of 
their atoms leave their bodies in a 
state of solidity; other proportions 
break up their solid structure and 
convert or melt them into fluids; 
and higher proportions expand them 
into vapours and gases. On the 
contrary, diminished excitements re 
duce the gases and vapours to fluids, 
and the fluids again into solids. In 
this way Mr. Farraday has conden¬ 
sed even the permanent gases into 
liquids. 

Cold is the mere absence of the 
motion of the atoms of the substance 
called heat, or the abstraction of it 
by the evaporation of atoms convey¬ 
ing away the motion, or by the jux¬ 
taposition of bodies susceptible of 
motion, but not previously moved. 
Cold and heat are mere relations of 
fixity and motion in the atoms of 
bodies. 

Dr. Black advanced a hypothe¬ 
sis that imagined that heat was a 
property of certain atoms, which 
njoved from one body to another, 
and when not in motion, were latent 
in the bodies. This idea has pre¬ 
vailed for half a century, and the 
name of these atoms is called cal- 
orxfick. 

It appears that the susceptibility, 
or inherent latent heat, is in certain 
various proportions, whether consi¬ 
dered as a susceptibility of excite- 
rhent in the atoms of the body, or as 
heat itself in a latent state: but as 
this last is a gratuitous property, it 
has, in general, ceased to be insisted 
on, as leading to many mistakes in 
reasoning and practice.- The sus¬ 
ceptibility, or specifick heat, has been 
determined for every kind of body by 
the labours of chymists during the 
last fifty years. Water is taken as 
1; then hydrogen gas is 21 by Craw¬ 
ford and 9.4 by Dalton. Oxygen at 
4.7 by Crawford and 1.3 by Dalton. 
Air 1.8 by both. Azote 0.8 by 
Crawford and 1.8 by Dalton. Aque¬ 
ous steam 1.55 by Crawford and 1.- 
17 by Dalton. Alcohol, by several 
averages, 0.8. Linseed and whale 
oil 0.5. Arterial blood 1.03, and ve¬ 
nous blood 0.89. Farinaceous sub¬ 
stances 0.5 and 0.4. Pit coal 0.28. 
Cinders 0.19. Glass 1.9. Iron 0.12 
Silver 0.08. Gold and lead 0.05. The 
varied susceptibility is proved by 
mixing the same quantity of fluids at 






HEAT. in 


the same temperature; thus, if oil 
at 50 be mixed with water at 100, 
the result in heat is 83J, and not 75 
deg. 

Whenever liquid is converted into 
gas or steam the gas or steam carries 
off the motion and therefore produces 
coldness. Hence damp bodies are 
cooled under an air pump, as is well 
known. 

In proportion as any thing ex¬ 
pands, as the expansion is the effect 
of motion, so the expansion demands 
motion and occasions evaporation, 
which occasions more cold. Hence 
the rarefaction of air occasions cold, 
because the same atoms by mere mo¬ 
tion fill a larger space. Hence, when 
air is halved in an exhausted re¬ 
ceiver, the hydrometer sinks fifty 
decrees, and if suddenly reduced to 
a sixty-fourth, it sinks 300 degrees 
before moisture expands to fill up the 
vacuum. Leslie’s very ingenious 
discovery consists in absorbing the 
moisture by a saucer full of oil of vi¬ 
triol, and thereby have the expan¬ 
sion without the moisture. When 
the air is rarified 250 times, water 
under the receiver is cooled down 
120°; and at the usual proportion of 
fifty times to eighty or 100°. In this 
experiment, the motion which kept 
the water liquid is transferred to the 
heated sulphurick acid. The water 
then fixes or crystallizes, but if left 
in the rarified air it entirely evapo¬ 
rates after it has become ice. 

Water freed from air or its more 
mobile atoms by boiling, should be 
close stopped in a bottle if proposed 
for experiment. Sulphurick acid or 
parched oatmeal is capable of con¬ 
gealing forty times its weight of wa¬ 
ter, with rarefaction from twenty to 
forty. Mercury is solidified in the 
same manner so as to bear the stroke 
of a hammer. 

In Bengal,, the Hindoos make ice 
by evaporation, and ice-pits for use 
in hot weather. The Hindoos also 
cool water by mixing one part of 
nitre with two of water. Chymists 
have ascertained that nitre and sal 
ammoniack, or nitrate of potash and 
common salt, in equal parts, added 
to three parts of water, sink the ther¬ 
mometer 40 degrees; and also, that 
three parts of the phosphate of soda 
and two parts of nitrate of ammo¬ 


nia, combined with one part of weak 
nitrick acid, will sink the thermo¬ 
meter 71 degrees. 

Leslie, to increase the dryness of 
air, employed flannel, powdered trap, 
dried oatmeal, also oil of vitriol; 
then, by suspending water in a po¬ 
rous vessel over these substances, 
they kept the surface dry, ancT in¬ 
creased the evaporation and coldness 
to 60 degrees. He also froze water 
under the receiver of an air-pump, 
by placing under it a vessel full of 
oil of vitriol, and the acid will ab¬ 
sorb half its weight of water. It ap¬ 
peared that when the air was with¬ 
drawn from the receiver, water un¬ 
der it parted with its air, and this 
being absorbed by oil of vitriol, or 
parched oatmeal, the water freezes. 
The degree of cold which is thus 
produced sinks the thermometer 180 
degrees. 

Combustion arises from the mo¬ 
tion created by oxygen gas, being 
imparted by the combination of the 
oxygen with the burning body, which 
usually consists of excited hydrogen 
in connexion with some substance, 
usually carbon. A preliminary ex¬ 
citement generates the hydrogen, 
with which the oxygen in the air im¬ 
mediately combines, parting with its 
motion, which motion heats the car¬ 
bon. The flame and light is an in¬ 
tense excitement, which necessarily 
radiates from the place of flame, and 
depends, in colour, on the third sub¬ 
stance with which the hydrogen was 
previously combined. These appear 
to be the instruments of fire, flame, 
and light. Oxygen is, therefore, call¬ 
ed the supporter of combustion; and 
other bodies are so called, owing, pro¬ 
bably, to the oxygen which they con¬ 
tain, or which, being fixed in like 
manner by excited hydrogen, part 
with the previous motion. The pro¬ 
ducts of this union or combustion 
are water, carbonick acid gas, and, 
when metals are consumed, a calx 
or oxyde, which is heavier than the 
metal by the quantity of oxygen 
which has been combined. The hy¬ 
drogen evolved by the first and con¬ 
tinued excitement is called the in- 
Jlammable gas ; and, perhaps, no 
combustion takes place without it 
in greater or less proportion. Bo¬ 
dies which do not contain it, as 
stones, bricks, &c., are incembusti- 






HR 


HEAT. 


ble. Flame, fire, &c., are, therefore, 
mere effects of the union of two 
gases, or the same when other bodies 
are used. 

If heat is atoms in motion, then 
gas is atoms in motion; and the 
formation of gas absorbs motion or 
heat, while the condensation distri¬ 
butes it. This theory accords with 
all phenomena, on nearly the same 
reasoning as the assumption that 
heat is a peculiar matter called calo- 
rick. 

The coarse mechanical methods 
of exciting heat are called percussion 
and friction ; thus, a hammer struck 
on metal, or any hard body, makes 1 
it hot, but if struck on a friable non-1 
cohering body, which yields to the! 
velocity and disperses by the blow,; 
no heat is produced. The heat pro¬ 
duced by friction is well known to 
all mechanicks, and is diminished 
either by making the surfaces smooth 
with unctuous substances or by wa¬ 
ter, which evaporates, and carries off 
the excitement. 

The cause of all inflammability is 
hydrogen; and in other words, in¬ 
flammability means nothing more 
than the fixation of oxygen gas (the 
atoms of which were previously in 
intense motion) by hydrogen gas, 
whenever hydrogen gas is evolved 
and also excited. Tallow, wax, oil, 
and alcohol, contain hydrogen; and 
to light them we apply a burning 
body, by which means the hydrogen 
is evolved, and excited to 800 de¬ 
grees and upwards; so that the oxy¬ 
gen of the air unites, and parts with 
its previous motions, by which mo¬ 
tions the excitement of the hydrogen 
is continued at 800 degrees and more. 

The burning, or decomposition and 
composition, continues as long as 
the substance affords hydrogen, and 
the supply of oxygen is of course in¬ 
definite. The products are soot and 
earbonick acid from the carbon and 
oxygen; water from the hydrogen 
and oxygen : and the excitement 
around, called light, is the result of 
the whole. 

Gas, or aqueous vapour, is formed 
in the simplest manner, by striking 
a piece of iron some quick blows 
with a hammer. The momentum of 
the hammer is thus transferred to 
the atoms of iron, which, by reac¬ 


tion from their sub-parts, radiate in¬ 
visibly, and the iron affords, as a re¬ 
sult, the sensation of heat, which 
continues till the momentum im¬ 
parted has been radiated. If then 
some water, which radiates better 
than iron, is put on the iron, the wa¬ 
ter is dispersed in steam or separated 
atoms. These emerge into a space 
filled with aerial atoms, and suffer 
constant deflections in every direc¬ 
tion, which ultimately produce small 
circular orbits in each atom, while 
the aggregate produces a cloud of 
steam, which continues till the mo¬ 
tions have been parted with, when it 
is precipitated as water. The mo¬ 
tions of the hammer are thus in the 
steam. All other gas is virtually or 
actually made in the same way, and 
the volumes depend on the excite¬ 
ment, and on the bulk and form of 
the atoms affected. 

As heat is the motion of atoms, so 
its communication enlarges bulks; 
180 degrees of heat expands 100 cu¬ 
bicle inches of air to 137 inches, and 
other gases in nearly the same pro¬ 
portion. 

This effect of expansion is the foun¬ 
dation of the thermometer; different 
degrees of excitement swell it and 
contract it; different makers mark 
their scale differently. The freezing 
point of Fahrenheit, the most com¬ 
mon, is at 32 degrees, and boiling 
water at 212 degrees. Mercury, how¬ 
ever, expands more at high degrees 
than low ones; and, therefore, the 
midway between freezing and boil¬ 
ing is at 110 degrees instead of 122 
degrees. Mercury is preferred be¬ 
cause it does not freeze till 40 degrees 
below zero. 

Mercury expands between 32° and 
212°, 0.02 to 0.018; water 0.0433; 
fixed oils 0.08; alcohol0.ll. 

100 parts of air at 32° expand at 
40° to 1011; at 50°, to 103f; at 60°, 
to 105.8; at 70°, to 108; at 80°, to 
110; at 100°, to 114; at 120°, to 118; 
at 150°, to 124 J; at 200°, to 135; and 
at 212°, to 137.4. 

The second’s pendulum, of 39.139 
inches, is lengthened by 30° of tem¬ 
perature the 128th of an inch, or eight 
vibrations in twenty-four hours. 

As much heat, or atomick motion, 
is imbibed by a pound of ice in melt- 





HEAT. 


119 


ing, as would raise a pound of water 
to 135 degrees. Black made it 140 
degrees, which, multiplied by ten, as 
the whole quantity ol heat in water, 
at 32°, gives 1400° as positive zero, 
when noJieat would remain. Craw¬ 
ford made the absolute zero 1532°; 
Gadolin made it 1432°; and La Place 
3460°; while Desormes makes it 
only 443°. 

Pieces of ice rubbed together melt. 
Pieces of brass rubbed together in 
an air-pump, become hot; and a va¬ 
cuum transmits heat, owing to the 
radiation of the atoms of the sub¬ 
stance which encloses it. 

The metals which retain heat the 
longest are brass and' copper, then 
iron and tin, and lastly, lead. 

Taking the heat-conducting power 
of water at 10, ash is 81, elm 32, oak 
33, and fir 39. 

The densest woods are the best 
conductors of heat. Hornbeam (4 
inches 10 lines long and linch thick) 
conducts 54 deg.; oak 50.5, Chestnut 
53.7, Fir 47.91, Poplar 37.59, and 
Cork 17.5. 

The best conductor of heat, or most 
excitable of the metals is silver; 
then gold, tin, copper, platinum, steel, 
iron, and lead. Hare’s fur, eider 
down, wool, and silk are the worst 
conductors. 

The safety lamp is founded on 
the principle,'that flame in passing 
through iron-wire messes, loses so 
much of its heat as not to be capable 
of igniting inflammable substances 
around, while flame only ignites gas. 
There ought to be above 625 aper¬ 
tures to the square inch. A pin stuck 
in a rushlight extinguishes it on the 
same principle of conveying heat 
from the wick. 

The absolute quantity of atomick 
motion, or calorick, as it is called, in 
water, at the freezing point, is taken 
by Black at 1400 degrees, below 
which no heat would remain. Craw¬ 
ford made this zero of water 1532 
deg.; Gadolin 1432 ; Lavoisier 3460 ; 
and Dalton 4, .5, and 6000. 

The intense motion which exists 
in atoms when gaseous, is proved by 
the recondensation and in this way 
the condensation of muriatick acid 
gas has transferred its own intense 
motion so as to make mercury boil 
at 656 deg. 


Ether boils at. 104 deg. 

Alcohol. 173.5 

Nitrick acid. 210 

Water. 212 

Oil of turpentine. 304 

Sulphurick acid 1.8. 472 

Phosphorus.. 554 

Sulphur. 570 

Linseed Oil . 640 

Mercury. 656 


That is, they cannot be made hot¬ 
ter, and their steam, which equalizes 
their heat, then balances the ntmos- 
pherick pressure at 30 inches. Taken 
then as to the force, the steam at 
lower temperature has less el^stick 
power. Vapour of ether at 64 deg. 
has a force only of 13 inches of mer¬ 
cury, but at 210 it is 166. So alco¬ 
hol at 55 deg. has a force of only 1, 
but at 200 deg. it is 53 ; and at 264 
deg. it is 166. Turpentine at 350 deg. 
is 53.8 ; and at 362 deg. is 62.4. 

Quicksilver melts 39 below zero. 

Ether freezes 47 below zero. 

Cold from sulphurick acid and 
snow 78.5 below zero. 

The greatest artificial cold ever 
produced was 91. 

Equal parts of alcohol and water 
freeze at 7 deg. and two of alcohol 
and one of water at 11 below zero. 

Wine freezes at 20 deg. 

Iron is a bright red at 752 deg. 

Lead melts, 594 deg. 

Bars which are 1 at 32 deg. expand 
at 212 deg. as under :— 


Glass becomes. 1.0008J 

Platina. 1.0009 

Castiron. 1.0011 

Steel. 1.0018 

Iron wire. 1.0014 

Gold. 1.0015 

Copper. 1.0017 

Brass. 1.0018 

Silver. 1.0020 

Tin. 1.0028 

Zinc. 1.0029 


The following table exhibits the 
exact expansion of various sub¬ 
stances between 32 and 212 deg. of 
Fahrenheit in parts of an inch: 


Glass. 


Steel. 

. .0137 

Iron. 

. .0151 

Copper. 

. .0204 

Brass . 


Pewter. 

. .0274 































120 


HEAT. 


Tin. .0298 

Lead. .0344 

Zinc. .0353 

Wedgwood’s Pyrometers consist 
of small cylinders of porcelain clay 
which permanently contract at great 
heats, but uncertainly. His scale 

commences at 1077 deg. of Fahren¬ 
heit, and the following table ex¬ 
presses some of his results: 

Wedg. Fah. 

Brass melts. 21 3807 

Silver melts. 28 4717 

Gold. 32 5237 

Flint Glass. 114 15897 

Plate Glass. 124 17197 

Cast Iron. ; . 150 20577 

Nankin Porcelain softens 160 21877 

A platina pyrometer gives different 
results; by it the degrees are as 
under : 

Silver melts • • 1823 Fah. 

Gold.2518 

Cast iron • • • 8696 

By this platma Scale it appears that 
mercury boils at 643; zinc melts 

705; Copper 2205; platina 11454. 

By other experiments of Mr. Da- 
niell, he makes brass melt at 1869; 
silver 2233; copper 2548 ; gold 2590 ; 
and cast iron 3479, which last, 
Wedgwood made 20577. Mr. Da- 
niell also makes the heat in a par¬ 
lour fire 1141. 

Roy, with Ramsden’s microscopick 
pyrometer, determined the expansion 
of brass from 32 to 212 on a foot, to 
be .0227 of an inch ; on steel to be 
.0137; on cast iron .0133; and on a 
glass rod .0097. 

The absolute heat, motion, or ca- 
lorick, in equal bulks of water and 
mercury, is as 28 to 1. 

Equal weights of water at 32 and 
212 deg. give 119 deg. 

Thermometers vary from true 
heat. 51.26 deg. of true heat gives 50 
ofReamur, and 47.3 by alcohol; and 
21.12 gives 20 by Reamur, and 16.5 
by ale hoi. 

Light matches are made of three 
parts of chlorate of potash and one 
of sulphur or sugar, made into paste 
with gum water. The matches are 
dipped in this paste, and when 
touched with sulphurick acid in a 
bottle, they flame. 

The human body, in a healthy 


state, is generally at 98° of Fahren¬ 

heit. Artificial hot baths are gene¬ 
rally 6 or 7° higher. The king’s 
bath, at Bath, is 116°; the hot bath 
117°; at Vichy 120°; at Barege 122°; 
Borset 132°; Aix-la-Chafelle 140°; 
Carlsbad 165°; Baden and Pisey 
104°; Buxton 82°; Bristol 74°; Mat- 
lock 66°. Sea water i3 seldom be¬ 
low 40°; springs about 45°; and 
pools and small rivers are at the 
temperature of the atmosphere. 

The heat of an oven applied to a 
dead human body for twelve days, 
reduced it from 120 to 12 lbs. 1 he 
fluids are to the solids as eight or 
ten to one. 

Blagden and others in heated 
rooms at 280° experienced no incon¬ 
venience in respiration, and the heat 
of their bodies did not rise above 995°. 
Chabcrt entered an oven at 500°. 
But all metal acquired the full heat; 
water boiled, &c. Fish too actually 
live in hot baths up to 158°. Trees 
also grew in a bath at 174° ; flowers, 
near a volcano at 210° ; water plants 
are found in boiling springs. 

By atmospherick and solar heat 
a sun-flower weighing 3 lbs., loses 
or changes 22 ounces in 24 hours, 
and a man 2 lbs. by animal heat. 

Newton considered flame as red- 
hot smoke ; but modern science re¬ 
gards it as the place where oxygen 
unites with hydrogen and carbon, 
and the diminution of volumes trans¬ 
fers an atomick excitement to the 
carbon, which radiates or protrudes 
light; the fixation of the gases caus¬ 
ing the heat as long as hydrogen is 
evolved. All flame, in fact, is pro¬ 
duced by the union of the hydrogen 
of the combustible and the oxygen 
of the air acting on carbon. 

Brown’s gas-steam-engine, work¬ 
ed by consuming carbonick oxyde, 
produces a pressure of 22 inches of 
mercury, or ] 1 lbs. to the square inch, 
or a working pressure of 10 lbs. 

When steam is first generated, by 
water at 212 deg., its force is that of 
one atmosphere, its density 1, and 
its specifics gravity 1.26 ; but at 320 
deg. its force is equal to six atmos¬ 
pheres ; at 358 deg. to ten ; at 416 
deg. to twenty ; and 590 deg. to one 
hundred atmospheres. The different 
force is created by the principle of 
heat, which is so much atomick mo- 
















HEAT. 


121 


tion transferred to the atoms of wa¬ 

ter, by which their orbits are en¬ 
larged. at every increase, and the 
expansive power increased, as the 
orbits of the atoms enlarge. 

Separation of fluids by distillation 
and by cold illustrates the principle; 
and tne demands of motion or heat 
from surrounding bodies during all 
expansions, and its radiations during 
condensations, are other illustrations 
which run through all chymistry. 

S team at 212 deg. has the force of 
the atmosphere, and is 3000 times 
rarer than water, or 3£ times rarer 
than air ; and great heat will raise 
it to 14000 times the bulk of water, 
equal to five atmospheres. Taking 
212 as 1, its force at 100 is .062 ; at 
260 is 2; at 290, 3; at 300, 3.337 ; 
and at 330, 4.6. 

Elastick fluids expand equally with 
equal increase of temperature. 

A cubick inch of water, ther. 40 
deg. may be expanded at 212 deg. to 
1694 inches, when its elastick force 
is equal to that of the atmosphere. 

The force of steam is in geometri¬ 
cal progression of the temperature. 

A bushel of coals will convert into 
steam fourteen cubick feet of water, 
occupying 1330 times that space as 
steam, and lifting the atmosphere 
above the water 1330 times its depth, 
or 39 millions of pounds one foot 
high, or with deductions 30 millions ; 
susceptible of further increase by 
more fuel, carrying it above 212 deg. 

In a steam-engine every nineteen 
cubick inches of water produces 
twenty feet of steam, or 1 to 1800 
nearly; and this is equal to one 
horse, and produced by a quarter of 
a pound of coals. In general, a 
chaldron of coals works a hundred 
horse power for four hours. 

One cubick foot of boiler in steam 
pipes heats 2000 feet of air 70 deg. ; 
and one square foot of pipe will warm 
200 feet of air. 

Watt’s improvement of the steam 
engine consisted in his discovery of 
the power of cold water to condense 
steam; and he, therefore, applied 
this neat means instead of allowing 
the steam to escape, as in the old en¬ 
gines. 

Four ounces of water will, in a se- 

K 


cond, condense 200 feet of steam, 
and reduce its expansive force to-*-. 

If heat is the motion of atoms, 
then, as all gas is formed by abstract¬ 
ing or absorbing heat, while atoms 
are dispersed, so animal heat is an 
immediate sequence of the respira¬ 
tion of aerial gas, and animal energy 
also. Thus a man consumes 330 
cubick inches of air in his twenty or¬ 
dinary respirations per minute; and 
the 28 cubick inches of its oxygen 
becomes carbonick acid gas, whose 
specifick heat is reduced - 3 ^. This 
is 1728 inches in 61 minutes, contain¬ 
ing 876 deg. of absolute heat; and an 
absorption of 876—195=681 deg. of 
absolute heat or motion is therefore 
fixed in the system. In exertions, it 
is doubled or trebled in quantity. 

One gallon of water in steam will 
raise six gallons from 50 to 212. 

4 lbs. of beef loses 1 lb. by boiling, 

1 lb. 5 oz. by roasting, and 1 lb. 3 oz. 
by baking; 4 lbs. of mutton loses 14 
oz. by boiling, 1 lb. 6 oz. by roasting, 
and 1 lb. 4 oz. by baking. 

Lamps were used by the ancients, 
and candles were an invention of the 
middle ages. At first, wicks were 
made of hemp, papyrus, and the pith 
of rushes. Ox and sheep tallow is 
now preferred. Tallow melts at 92 
deg., spermaceti at 133 deg., and 
bleached wax at 155 deg. Wax can¬ 
dles are made very cheap in Ame¬ 
rica, from the berry of a particular 
species of myrtle, which yields ex¬ 
cellent wax, of a green colour. They 
may also be made by mixing wax 
with the pulp of potatoes, and also 
of the butter of the cocoa-nut, and 
these are excellent. 

A gas-light equal to one good can¬ 
dle consumes 1.43 of cubick gass per 
hour; four candles 1.96 per hour ; 
'six candles 2-^ ; eight candles 2.95; 
and ten candles 3 feet. 

One lb. of hydrogen consumes or 
fixes 7J lbs. of oxygen, which melts 
320 lbs. of ice. A lb. of wax, oil, or 
tallow consumes or fixes 3 lbs. of 
oxygen, which melts 104 lbs. of ice. 

Scotch canal coal produces the 
greatest proportion of illuminating 
gas; then Wigan, Wakefield, Staf¬ 
fordshire, Dean Forest, and New¬ 
castle. 







122 


HEAT. 


A chaldron of coals yields 10000 
cubick feet of gas. Street lamps 
consume 5 feet per hour, and Argand 
lamps 4 feet. 

16000 cubick feet of gas are ob¬ 
tained from a chaldron of Newcastle 
coals, or 590 per cwt. 11000 cubick 
feet are produced by a chaldron of 
Staffordshire coal, or 400 per cwt. 

Gas-pipes of half an inch in dia¬ 
meter supply a light equal to 20 can¬ 
dles, one inch 100, two inches 450, 
three inches 1000. 

The gas which lights London is 
made by four companies, who con¬ 
sume 34000 chaldrons of coals per 
annum, which make 400 millions of 
cubick feet of gas, lighting 62000 in¬ 
door and 7500 street lamps. Vari¬ 
ous establishments make one-eighth 
more. 

The gasometers of the London gas 
companies contain each nearly 20- 
000 cubick feet of gas, and some have 
47 of them ; and altogether 1315 re¬ 
torts. The coals make one-fourth 
more in bulk of coke, which sells at 
about 20s. the chaldron. 

Sixteen retorts will produce daily 
50000 cubick feet of gas, consuming 
five tons of coals in the retorts, and 
costing above five farthings for every 
ten cubick feet of gas; while it is 
computed that this will give as much 
light as half a pound of candles. 
The same quantity of oil gas would 
cost 2 %d .; while the refuse in mak¬ 
ing the coal gas is worth a fifth. 

In 1830, the gas-pipes in and 
round London, were above 1000 
miles. 

Water in freezing evaporates as 
much as by direct heat, and ice eva¬ 
porates largely. As evaporation 
carries off tne most mobile atoms, 
or calorick, it produces coldness in 
the body. 

Fordyce, Morveau, and Romford, 
proved that when the atoms of fluids 
become fixed by freezing, they in¬ 
crease in weight; lateral motions of 
fluidity, diminish weight. Davy and 
Berzelius state that the weight of 
an atom of azote is twice its speci- 
fick gravity. 

The bulb of a thermometer, co¬ 
vered with cotton, and moistened 
with ether, may by the evaporation 
be reduced far below zero. 


Three parts of snow and four at 
potass, or two parts of snow and 
three of crystallized muriate of lime, 
produce 83 deg. of cold. 

Two parts of common salt mixed 
with two of ice or snow produce a 
degree of cold five degrees below the 
zero of Fahrenheit. One of sal am- 
moniack and two of common salt 
with five of snow, make it seven de¬ 
grees colder. And equal parts of ni¬ 
trate of ammonia and common salt 
with two and a half of snow, re¬ 
duced it 25 degrees below zero. Five 
parts of muriate of lime and four 
parts of snow freeze mercury. If 
the muriate of lime be crystallized, 
or four parts of dry caustick potash 
be added to three of snow, fifty de¬ 
grees below zero may be acquired. 
Mr. Walker of Oxford produced nine¬ 
ty-one degrees, by applying two 
parts of sulphurick acid to snow. The 
whole arises from the transfer of the 
atomick motions of the adjacent 
bodies to effect the melting of the 
snow, and the cold is inversely as 
the time in which the melting is ef¬ 
fected. It is a case of the transfer 
of motion. 

Salts in water, lower the freezing 
point. Thus, 25 per cent, of com¬ 
mon salt in water lowers its freezing 
point from 32 degrees to 4 degrees, 
but other salts less. Hence, water 
frozen at 32 degrees, is liquefied by 
25 per cent, salt, till the thermome¬ 
ter falls to four degrees, and in pro¬ 
portion for other quantities of salt. 

Acids and salts absorb moisture, 
and as they and the water freeze at 
different degrees, freezing decom¬ 
poses them, while the temperature 
in connexion, occasions the water 
not to freeze at 32 degrees. Sea 
water, therefore, does not freeze so 
soon as fresh water, and 25 percent, 
of sulphurick and nitrick acid lowers 
the freezing point of the mixture to 
7.5 and 7. When snow or pounded 
ice are mixed with salt or the acids, 
these dissolve the solid crystals into 
fluids, and in converting solidity in¬ 
to fluidity withdraw motion from 
surrounding bodi*;-. «<u as in them to 
be capable of producing a cold of 70 
degrees below zero. 

All hot bodies distribute their heat 
or atomick motion to other atoms 
around, and this depends on the 
roughness of the surface, as exposing 





HEAT. 


the greatest number of points to sur¬ 
rounding atoms. Metal, paper and 
glass radiate the least; lamp black 
tne most. 

A thermometer fell from 190 to 68 
degrees in a vacuum in ten minutes, 
but in air in six minutes. Two tin 
globes, one painted lamp black and 
the other bright, the first lost half its 
heat in 35 minutes, and the other in 
44 minutes. 

If the surface of the metals is 
scratched or roughed, the radiation, 
of course, is increased, because the 
excited atoms which cause the heat 
have more points for distribution to 
the atoms around. Some of the pro¬ 
portions are lamp-black 100, ice 85, 
polished iron 15, gold, silver and 
copper 12. Reflection in right lines, 
has contrary power to distribution 
or radiation by contact, and in this 
last case it is of course diminished 
by rarefying the medium. 

Heat does not pass through bo¬ 
dies till it has heated them or put 
their atoms in uniform motion. 
Some bodies are more susceptible or 
contain more susceptible atoms than 
others. Silver and gold, copper and 
tin, are among bodies the most sus¬ 
ceptible of atomick excitement, and 
conduct what is called heat the best; 
other metals have less facility, 
stones less than metals; brick, 
glass, dried woods, and charcoal less 
still; feathers, silk, wool, and hair, 
least of all bodies. This list proves 
that the conducting power is an ef¬ 
fect of the continuity of the matter, 
and is less as the interstices between 
the atoms are greater. Liquids are 
dispersed by the heat, and therefore 
bad conductors. Gases are enlarged 
by it, and therefore it is exhausted in 
themselves. 

Taking the radiating power of 
lamp black at 100 seconds, ice is 85 
seconds, lead 19 seconds, iron 15, 
and tin, gold, silver, and copper 12. 

The invisible radiations from heat¬ 
ed bodies may be acted upon by re¬ 
fraction and reflection like light, but 
they do not pass through transpa¬ 
rent bodies. 

A poker laid over a fire, concen¬ 
trates the heat of the passing smoke, 
and creates a draught through the 
fire. 

Wheels and casks are bound by 


_123 

hoops, swelled by heat, the contrac¬ 

tion rendering them more binding. 

A thermometer, at a certain eleva¬ 
tion, cooled in air, azote and oxygen 
in 100 seconds, in hydrogen in 40, in 
coal-gas in 70, and in carbonick acid 
in 112. 

Argand’s lamp carries a current of 
air through the wick, by which more 
oxygen is fixed. 

If oil at 100, is mixed with water 
at 50, the result is 66J. Hence, water 
is conceived to have double the sus¬ 
ceptibility or power of receiving heat 
that oil has. 

When water freezes it forms itself 
into crystals with interstices, and 
expands : hence, ice swims, and is 
eight parts in one hundred lighter 
than water. Some metals and sul¬ 
phur also expand when crystallizing, 
while other bodies contract. Salt 
water does not freeze till four de¬ 
grees lower. 

A volume of ice is melted by as 
much heat as will raise an equal 
bulk of water 140 degrees. 

A cubick foot of oxygen imparts 
876 degrees of heat. 

Though lead melts at 540 by itself, 
bismuth at 460, and tin at 408 de¬ 
grees of Fahrenheit, yet if mixed in 
the proportions of 5, 8, and 3, they 
melt at 200 degrees. 

Phosphorus smokes and becomes 
luminous at 43 deg.; at 99 it melts, 
and at 219 evaporates. As friction 
kindles it, so a match thrust into a 
box of it, combined with sulphur or 
lime, takes fire. All luminosity of 
insects, &c. arises from secretion of 
phosphorus. 

Animals die if their vital tempera¬ 
ture is increased one-twelfth. 

Hemp, cotton, matting, &c. with 
oil and lamp-black, generate heat, 
and finally ignite spontaneously 
when exposed to air. 

In flint and steel, the intense ex¬ 
citement of the steel occasions the 
particles to take fire, i. e. hydrogen 
is excited and oxygen combined or 
fixed, which is the universal charac- 
teristick of flame and luminosity. 

The compression of water by 
thirty atmospheres gives out the 
sixty-sixth of a degree of heat. 

Equal volumes of all gases have 





124 


HEAT. 


the same speeifick heat; but each 
gas has a different conducting power. 

Melted snow produces about one- 
eight of its bulk of water; hence 
snow, two feet deep, produces three 
inches of water when thawed. 

In Cornwall, certain steam-en¬ 
gines have lifted 40 million pounds 
one foot, with one bushel of coals; 
and one at Wheel To wan lifted 62 
millions with an 80-inch cylinder. 

Frost proceeds downwards, heat 
upwards. 

As heat rises with the rarefied air, 
Count Rumford taught to place 
grates low, to make chimneys small, 
and mantle-pieces low. 

The heat making atoms which 
evolve from an iron-stove at a black 
heat, are visible in a sun-beam in a 
dark room. 

A naked body in air cools in 576 
seconds, in wool in 1118 seconds, in 
cotton in 1046 seconds, in hare’s fur 
1315 seconds, in raw silk 1284 se¬ 
conds, and in eider down 1305 se¬ 
conds. 

Water saturated with nitre loses 
17 degs. of heat, and with nitrate of 
ammonia 46 degs. of heat. 

All solid bodies become luminous 
at 800 degs. 

Extreme cold produces the same 
perception on the skin as great heat. 
When mercury is frozen at 40 deg. 
below zero, the sensation is the 
same as that of touching red hot 
iron. 

Acids combine with water, con¬ 
dense it, and produce heat. 

One gallon of water converted into 
steam will heat six gallons at 50 deg. 
to the boiling point; and one foot of 
surface of cast iron steam pipe will 
heat 200 cubick feet of air 70 degs. 

Fourier calculates that the celes¬ 
tial spaces are 58 deg. below zero. 

Eggs are hatched at 104 deg. of 
heat. 

Iron is melted by heated air, with 
three-fourths of the coals. 

When a bulk of lime and water are 
combined, the heat is caused by a 
condensation equal to the bulk of 
lime, for the mixture is the same bulk 
as at first. 

Sir Charles Blagden exposed him¬ 


self in an oven heated to 250 deg. for 
eight minutes without injury. A va¬ 
pour bath cannot be endured at 120 
deg. 

Steam at 32 deg. has a force of 2; 
at 80 deg. of 1; and 120 deg. of 3.3; 
at 212 deg. of 30 ; at 220 deg. of 40; 
at 300 deg. of 140; and at 312 deg. 
of 167. 

Water boils at 187 deg. at the top 
of Mont Blanc. 

The coldest hour of the twenty- 
four is five in the morning, and the 
warmest is from two to three in the 
afternoon. The mean heat is from 
half-past eight to half-past rune. 
The greatest range is in July, the 
least in December. 

At Bear Lake, Captain Franklin, 
on February 7, found the thermom¬ 
eter at 58 degrees below zero, and 
for two days it had been 57.5 deg. 

A convex lens burns at 25 feet 
under the surface of the sea in a 
diving bell. 

Count Rumford gave 1000Z. 3 per 
cent, annuity, the interest of which 
is to be disposed of every other year 
to the person who shall commu¬ 
nicate any discovery on heat and 
light. The preference to be given to 
such discovery as tends most to pro¬ 
mote the good of mankind; and to 
be determined by the council of the 
Royal Society. 

Combustible bodies will not burn 
if dipped in a solution of potash, or 
phosphate of lime, or muriate, sul¬ 
phate, and phosphate of ammonia, 
with borax. The alkaline substances 
arrest the hydrogen, or prevent its 
combination with oxygen. 

In Siberia and Hudson’s Bay, 
mercury sometimes becomes solid, 
proving the cold to be 39 deg. below 
zero. Wine and spirits also becomes 
a spongy mass of ice, and the freez¬ 
ing of the sap in trees and of water 
in rocks explodes them. 

Humboldt, La Place, &c. consider 
the fact of an internal heat in the 
earth as fully established, and they 
ascribe to it the origin and phenom¬ 
ena of volcanoes in connexion with 
metallick bodies, and the access of 
water to supply oxygen and hydro¬ 
gen. 

At eight feet deep the annual tem¬ 
perature varies only from five to se- 





HEAT. 


ven degrees; and at four feet, from 

ten to twelve degrees; while atone 
foot, it ranges from nineteen to 
twenty degrees; and in the open air, 
from 50° to 65°. 

At the depth of forty or fifty feet 
the temperature of the earth is the 
same in winter and summer, appa¬ 
rently colder in summer, and warmer 
in winter. Frost seldom penetrates 
above a foot into the ground. 

The earth is believed to increase in 
heat, a degree in every fifteen or 
twenty yards depth. Cordier. 

In the catacombs at Paris, the 
thermometer through the year, is 
from fifty-two to fifty-four degrees, 
while on the surface it varies from 
ninety degs. to 0 deg. In Mexican 
mines it stands at seventy-four de¬ 
grees. 

Depths of undisturbed air are like 
water. In a silver mine in Norway, 
300 feet deep, the bottom is covered 
with snow, and so in other deep 
caves, owing, as is believed, to the 
cold air of winter sinking to the bot¬ 
tom. 

While air above snow is seventy 
degs. below the freezing point, the 
surface of the ground below the 
snow is only 32 degs. 

At great depths in the sea, as 
4000 feet, the difference is from fif¬ 
teen to twenty-two degrees between 
the air and the water at that depth; 
and at 4680 feet the water is twenty- 
six degrees, while the air is 48^° 

Near Jamaica, at the depth of 6- 
000 feet, the thermometer fell from 
eighty three in the air to forty-five in 
the sea. 

It has been proved by experiment 
m lat. 56 deg. 10 min., by keeping 
thermometers fixed in the ground at 
various depths, that frost does not 
penetrate so deep in the earth as a 
foot; that at the depths of one, two, 
and three feet, the lowest tempera¬ 
ture, during two years, was, at one 
foot, 33 deg.; at two feet, 36 deg.; 
and at three feet, 39 deg.; while the 
highest was at one foot, 35 deg; two, 
52.5° ; and three, 52 deg. 

The lake of Geneva, at the depth 
of 1000 feet, is always 42 deg. and no 
variation takes place below 160 feet. 
In a lake near Rome, at 490 feet, the 
thermometer was 44 j, though at the 

K 2 


_ 125 

surface it was 77 deg. Variation 
does not take place below 120 feet. 
In Scotland, on the surface of Loch 
Lomond, the thermometer stood at 
59.3, but at 90 feet, it fell to 43.7, and 
at 240, was 41.3 ; and at 600 was 41.1. 

The deepest coal mine in England 
is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. 
The annual temperature at the bot¬ 
tom, 400 yards below the surface, is 
77 deg., and at 300 yards, 70 deg.; 
while at the surface it is but 48 deg., 
being about 1 deg. for every 15 yards. 
This may explain the origin of hot 
springs, for at 3300 yards the heat 
would be equal to boiling water, 
taking 20 yards to a degree. The 
heat of the Bath waters is 116 deg., 
hence they would appear to arise at 
1320 yards below. 

The mean annual temperature at 
the level of the sea, is for different 
latitudes, as under, and the third co¬ 
lumn shows the height in feet of 
constant freezing in those latitudes. 



deg. 

feet 

Equator . . 

. 84.2 . . 

. . 15000 

lat. 10 . . . 

. 82.6 . . 

. . 14700 

20 . . . 

. 78.1 . . 

. . 13300 

30 . . . 

. 71.1 . . 

. . 11500 

40 . . . 

. 62.6 . . 

. . 9000 

50 . . . 

. 53.6 . . 

. . 6300 

60 . . . 

.45 . . 

. . 3800 

70 . . . 

. 38.1 . . 

. . 1700 

80 . . . 

. 33.6 . . 

. . 450 


The heat maybe supposed to arise 
from the verticity of the sun in the 
tropicks, and then dispersed through 
the mass, but finding a limit by dis¬ 
persion in the annual orbit. 

Of 10000 rays falling perpendicu¬ 
larly, 8100 reach the earth; 7000 at 
50 ieg., 2800 at 7 deg., and 5 af 0 
deg. 

Water seldom freezes till the me¬ 
ridian altitude of the sun is less than 
40 deg. 

In the latitude of London, Ame¬ 
rica is 13 deg. colder than Europe, 
and m 40 la}, is 8.6 deg. colder than 
Europe. 

In China and Africa, the thermo¬ 
meter rises to 110 and 113, and even 
to 125 deg. in the sandy deserts; and 
in Hudson’s Bay it falls to 50 and 55 
deg. below zero. 

When the sun is in Aries or Libra, 
the relative heat of the equator, ac¬ 
cording to Humboldt, taken at 1000; 








126 


CHYMISTRY. 


at 20 deg. is 940; at 40 deg. 760; and 
at 60 deg. 500. But when in Cancer, 
or Capricorn, is for the same hemi¬ 
sphere at 0 deg. 9117; at 20 deg. 1008; 
at 40 and 50 deg. 1150; at 70 deg.’ 
1175 ; and at 90 deg. 1250; owing to 
sunshine for six months. 

The temperature in equal latitudes, 
is from 4 to 8 deg. less in the south¬ 
ern hemisphere, supposed to arise 
from the extended surfaces of water, 
and from the sun passing through 
the southern signs in 7£ days less 
than the northern. 

A condensed mixture of oxygen 
and hydrogen, in the proportion of 
water, passed through a pipe, con¬ 
stitutes the oxy-hydrogen blow-pipe, 
roducing unprecedented degrees of 
eat; and lime, alumina, and the al¬ 
kalies are melted, and even vola¬ 
tilized in a few minutes. Rock crys¬ 
tal and quartz are converted into 
glass. Opal and flint into enamel. 
Blue sapphire, talc, emerald, lapis 
lazuli, are converted into glass. Gold 
and diamond are volatilized. Pla- 
tina and brass wire burn with a green 
flame. Copper melts without burn¬ 
ing; but iron burns with brilliant 
light. Iceland spar and strontian 
and pure lime give out an amethyst- 
coloured flame. 

When oxygen and hydrogen are 
burned, the neat is 2578 deg.; but the 
same oxygen and charcoal give 2967 
deg.; and with iron, zinc, and tin, 
5825 deg. Despretz. 

Mercury for thermometers is puri¬ 
fied by agitation in a bottle with 
sand, and then by straining it through 
leather. 

There are four thermo'metrical 
scales in general use, by which mer¬ 
cury determines heat from its freez¬ 
ing point, at 40 deg. below zero, to 
600 deg. where it boils. 

Fahrenheit begins at 32 deg. be¬ 
low the point of freezing water, for 0 
or zero; and setting 32 at the freezing 
point, he ascends, to 212, the heat of 
boiling water; taking 98 as blood 
heat, and 176 as the neat at which 
alcohol boils; 55 as temperate, and 
76 as summer heat. 

Fahrenheit supposed, erroneously, 
that 32 of his divisions below the 
freezing point of water (0 on his 
scale) was the zero, or greatest de¬ 
gree of cold. 


Reaumur’s begins 10 degrees of 
Fahrenheit below Fahrenheit, and 
divides up to the freezing into 20 deg. 
Then above begins again ; and his 
20 corresponds with 77 deg. of Fah¬ 
renheit, and his 40 deg. with 122 oi 
Fahrenheit, and his 80 deg. with 
212 of Fahrenheit $ every 2£ of Reau¬ 
mur being 1 of Fahrenheit, taken 
from the freezing point. 

Celsius counts 25 below the freez¬ 
ing point; and above, his 10 corre¬ 
sponds with 50 of Fahrenheit, and 
his 50 w r ith 122 of Fahrenheit. 

De Lisle begins at the boiling 
point, and reckons downwards from 
0 to 150, at the freezing point; his 
177 corresponding with 0 in Fahren¬ 
heit, and with 17 of Celsius, and his 
75 with 40 of Reaumur ? 122 of Fah¬ 
renheit, and 50 of Celsius. 

The Centigrade thermometer di¬ 
vides 32 to 212 of Fahrenheit into 
100 deg., i. e. 180 as 100. Then 20 
deg. to zero. 

Fahrenheit and Reaumur are most 
frequently quoted. 10 of Reaumur 
below freezing is 9£ of Fahrenheit; 
5 of R. above freezing 43J of F.; 10 
of R. 54J of F.; 15 of R. 66 nearly oi 
F.; 20 of R. is 77 of F.; 25 of R. is 
88£ of F.; 30 of R. is 99£ of F.; and 
35 of R. is 110| ofF. 

In Wedgewood’s pyrometer he be¬ 
gins at red heat visible by daylight, 
or 1077 deg. of Fahrenheit; and every 
deg. with Wedgewood is 130 deg. of 
Fahrenheit. In his scale he found 
that brass melts at 21, silver 28, gold 
32, and iron 160, being 21897 of Fah¬ 
renheit. It measures up to 32277. 


CHYMISTRY. 

The science of chymistry assumed 
its modern character in the hands 
of Beecher and Stahl, residents of 
Mentz. They first perceived the con¬ 
nexion of the atmosphere and of 
gases, with the production of pheno¬ 
mena, and paved the way for the dis¬ 
coveries of Bergman and Scheele, 
two Swedes, who died in 1784 and 
1786, and were contemporary with 
Priestley in England, and Lavoisier 
in France ; while Berzelius, another 
Swede, Fourcroy and Berthollet in 
France, and Thompson and Davy in 






CHYMISTRY. 


127 


England, have conferred arithme¬ 

tical precision on its pursuits. 

One volume of any gas combines 
with one of another, or with two or 
three exactly.' 

The weight of an atom of oxygen 
is to one of hydrogen as 8 to 1, or 1 
to 0.125; and to one of nitrogen or 
azote as 4 to 7, or 1 to 1.75. 

Metallick oxvdes are formed by 
one, two, or three equal doses of 
oxygen. 

The specifick gravity of nitrous 
gas is the mean of the oxygen and 
azote. 

100 measures of carbonick oxyde 
and 50 of oxygen, make 100 of car¬ 
bonick acid. 

100 measures of azote and 300 of 
hydrogen, make 200 of ammoniacal 
gas. 

100 measures of oxygen gas, at 
1.111, and 200 of hydrogen, at 0.69, 
form water. 

100 cubick inches of hydrogen 
weigh 2.117 grains; and the same 
combined with sulphur make 100 of 
sulphureted hydrogen gas, weighing 
35.89. 

The weight of an atom of oxygen 
is taken as unity, as the relative 
standard of other atoms. 

100 cubick inches of oxygen, com ¬ 
bined with burning charcoal, are 100 
of carbonick acid gas, weighing 
46.313 grains, of which the carbon 
weighs 12.641, and the original oxy¬ 
gen 33.672. 

An atom of copper weighs 8; of 
platinum 12.161; of tin 14.705 ; of 
gold 24.838; of lead 26; and of iron 
7.143. 

An atom of carbon is 0.751. 

An atom of sulphur is 2, or twice 
that of oxygen. 

The oxygen in the acid of a neutral 
salt is a multiple of the oxygen in 
the base by 2, 3, 4, &c. 

The weight of an atom of manga¬ 
nese is 6.833. 

An atom of iron 7.143. 

An atom of copper 8. 

An atom of antimony 11.249. 

An atom of silver 13.714. 

An atom of platinum 12.161. 

An atom of gold 24.838. 


An atom of lead 25.974. 

An atom of sulphur 2.0434. 

The weight of an atom of ammo¬ 
nia is 2.128; of magnesia 2.503; of 
lime 3.62; barytes 9.7; oxalick acid 
4.625, and it is a compound of 3 atoms 
of oxygen, 2 of carbon, and one of 
hydrogen. 

In forming nitrous gas, by mixing 
oxygen and nitrogen, no condensa¬ 
tion takes place. The bulk is equal 
to the bulk of the two, and the sps- 
cifick gravity is the mean of both. 

When 100 measures of carbonick 
oxyde and 50 measures of oxygen 
gas are united, the compound is but 
100 measures; and when 100 mea¬ 
sures of azote are mixed with 300 
measures of hydrogen, they form 
but 200 measures of ammoniacal 
j gas. 

Sulphurick. acid is 1 of sulphur and 
1 five-tenths of oxygen. 

Carbonick acid is 1 of carbon and 
2.666 of oxygen. 

The weight of an atom of oxygen 
is considered as 8, and an atom of 
hydrogen as 1, and an atom of sul¬ 
phur is 16. 100 cubick inches of hy¬ 

drogen gas weigh 2.117 grains; and 
100 cubick inches of sulphureted 
hydrogen gas, of equal bulk, weigh 
35.89; being 2.117 of hydrogen 33.- 
773 of sulphur, or 33.445 of sulphur. 

The weight of an atom of chlorine 
is 4.498. 

The weight of an atom of hydro¬ 
gen is 0.132, but it is taken as one- 
eighth, or .0125. Oxygen being the 
common integer or 1. 

7.5, or 11.25, or 15 of oxygen com¬ 
bine with all the metals, and form 
protoxydes or peroxydes. 

33.5 or 67 of chlorine form chlo¬ 
rides. 

50.5 or 101 of nitrick acid form ni¬ 
trates. 

37.5 or 75 of sulphurick acid form 
sulphates. 

20.7 of carbonick acid form car¬ 
bonates. 

25 of phosphorick acid form the 
phosphates. 

15 or 30 of sulphur form the sul- 
phurets. 

Oxygenated water is a compound, 





128 


CHYMISTRY. 


by weight, of 1 hydrogen and 16 oxy¬ 
gen, or equal volumes. 

100 cubick inches of carbonick acid 
weigh 46.5 grains, and 100 cubick 
inches of oxygen 33.8 grains; hence 
the carbon is 12.7 grains. 

100 cubick inches of carbureted 
hydrogen weigh 29.6 grains, of which 
the carbon is 25.4. 

A cubick inch of water, ther. 60 
deg. weighs 252.52 grains, and con¬ 
tains 28.06 grains of hydrogen, and 
224.46 grains of oxygen. The vol¬ 
ume of28.06 hydrogen is 1325 cubick 
inches, of 224.46 grains of oxygen is 
662 cubick inches; consequently, the 
cubick inch is expanded in the gases 
1987 times. 

4 volumes of nitrogen, with one of 
oxygen, form atmospherick air in all 
situations, high and low, hot and 
cold. 

Copper filings and sulphur unite in 
the proportions of 80 copper to 20 of 
sulphur, and also 64 of copper to 32 
of sulphur. 

The sulphurick acid has 100 parts 
of sulphur to 150 of oxygen ; the sul¬ 
phurous is equal. Phosphorick acid 
is 100 phosphorus to 115 oxygen; 
and phosphorus acid is 100 to 58. 
Carbonick acid is 100 to 25 ; and bo- 
racick acid is 100 to 200. Nitrick 
acid, the base of which is nitrogen, 
is 29.77 nitrogen to 70.23 oxygen ; 
and arsenick acid is 65 arsenick and 
35 oxygen. 

79 parts of nitrogen and 21 of oxy¬ 
gen make vital atmospherick air; 
79 and 42 make nitrous oxyde, an in¬ 
toxicating gas; 79 and 84 make ni¬ 
trick oxyde gas; 79 and 168 make 
nitrous acid, fluid ; 79 and 210 of oxy¬ 
gen make nitrick acid. 

Modern theory considers the non- 
metallickelements as, oxygen, whose 
equivalent is 8, chlorine 36, bromine 
75, and iodine 124, as electro-nega¬ 
tive; and hydrogen 1, nitrogen 14, 
sulphur 16, phosphorus 12, selenium 
40, carbon 6, silicon 8, and boron 6, 
as electro-positive. 

Their acid binary compounds are 
electro-negative , and the rest neutral, 
except ammonia (15) which alone is 
alkaline, basick, or electro-positive. 
Then the unions with salifiable bases 
of some of the twenty-two acids are 
salts. 


Of the twenty-two neutral com¬ 

pounds—1 hydrogen (1) 1 oxygen f8) 
form water (9); 1 carbon (6) -j-1 oxy¬ 
gen (8) form carbonick oxyde (14); 2 
carbon (12) + 1 nitrogen (14) form 
cyanogen (26); 1 silicon (8) +1 oxy¬ 
gen (8) form silex (16); 2 carbon 
(12) -j- 2 hydrogen (2) form carbu¬ 
reted hydrogen (14), the most im¬ 
portant. 

The equivalents of the metals are, 
antimony 44, arsenick 38, bismuth 71, 
copper 64, cadmium 56, chromium 
28, Columbian 144, gold 200, iron 28, 
lead 104, mercury 200, molybdenum 
48, manganese 28, nickel 30, plati¬ 
num 96, palladium 56, rhodium 44, 
silver 110, tellurium 29, tungsten 96, 
tin 59, zinc 34. 

The natural metals afford nine 
acids, all from 2 arsenick, 2 molyb¬ 
denum, 2 antimony, 1 Columbian, 1 
tungsten, and 1 chromium. 22 alka¬ 
line binary compounds, and-26 neu¬ 
tral. Their compounds being re¬ 
duced at the negative or alkaline side 
of the voltaick battery, they are call¬ 
ed electro-negative. 

Chymical compositions always take 
place in definite proportions, which 
are determined by experiment; and 
as arithmetical seem to be mecha¬ 
nical, or subject to the laws of mo¬ 
tion, arising from the forms of the 
atoms, or the combinations which 
facilitate or obstruct their motions 
when active, as in fluids or gases. 
What has been called elective attrac¬ 
tion, affinity, and repulsion, are ex¬ 
emplifications of these laws of mo¬ 
tion in different atoms. 

All compound bodies, or the small¬ 
est portions of them, are composed 
of the same constituents, united in 
fixed proportions. This discovery 
was made by Higgins, Bergman, 
Kir wan, and Weusell; and perfected 
by Richter, Berthollet, and Dalton. 
Gay Lussac showed that one volume 
of any gas always combines with 
one, two, or three of another gas: 
thus, one volume of ammonia with 
one volume of muriatick acid, pro¬ 
duces neutral muriate of ammonia ; 
or with one volume of carbonick 
acid, produces carbonate of ammo¬ 
nia. 

Compounded bodies whose elements 
are gaseous, consist either of equal 
volumes of those elements, or if one 





CHYMISTRY. 129 


exceed the other, the excess is by 
some regular multiple of the volume. 

The proportions in which oxygen 
combine are designated by the pre¬ 
fixes prot , for one degree, as prot-ox- 
yde ; for the second, deut-oxyde; for 
the third and upwards jper-oxyde. 
The syllable bi is prefixed in other 
cases to signify a double proportion 
of either compound, as bi sulphuret 
of potash. 

Eight parts by weight of oxygen 
and one of hydrogen, form water; 
hence the equivalent numbers of the 
three are I, 8,9. If oxygen be taken 
as 10, then hydrogen is 1.25, and 
water 11.25. These are the stand¬ 
ards for the equivalents of all bodies. 
Water is also formed of one volume 
of oxygen to two ofhydrogen. When 
water is decomposed by electricity, 
the hydrogen at the negative pole is 
double the volume of the oxygen at 
the positive pole. 

The division of all substances into 
electro-negative and electro-positive, 
arises from the position they take 
when placed between the poles of a 
voltaick battery. Those which go 
to the negate pole are called electro¬ 
positive , and those to the positive 
pole electro-negative. Oxygen and 
chlorine are electro-negative, and 
hydrogen and nitrogen are electro¬ 
positive. 

The solution of fixed bodies by flu¬ 
ids, arises from the atomick motions 
of the fluid, and as these are increas¬ 
ed by heat, or more motion, the so¬ 
lution is more rapid. A lump of dry 
alum is thus dissolved in half the 
time in water at 80 deg., and in a 
fifth at 120 deg. Fluids of the same 
degree of motion mingle at once, 
others in longer time; and some 
give out, and some absorb heat in 
mixing. Some theorists ascribe these 
variations to attractions and repul¬ 
sions ; peculiar, if possible, powers 
which the phenomena do not de¬ 
mand. Motion is, of course, oppos¬ 
ed to cohesion, and its withdrawal 
favourable to fixity. This is the re¬ 
pulsion and attraction of modern 
theorists. 

The solution of solids always ab¬ 
sorbs heat, or motion, and their re¬ 
solidification gives it out. Fluids 
have also to dissolve one another, 
and hence produce heat or cold, as 


the resulting volume is less or more. 
Some atoms become fluid or gaseous 
sooner or later than others, and 
some fluids and gases have more or 
less motion in the atoms which com¬ 
pose them, and these circumstances 
create most of the phenomena of 
chymistry. Others, however, as¬ 
cribe them to attraction and repul¬ 
sion, while it is alleged by others that 
attraction and repulsion are impos¬ 
sible. 

The oxydes of mercury, silver, 
gold, platinum, rhodium, iridium, 
osmium, nickel, paladium, and their 
binary compounds are reduced by 
heat alone, and are called electro¬ 
positive. 

Lead, cobalt, copper, bismuth, 
arsenick, antimony, and eight others, 
retain and absorb oxygen at high 
temperatures. 

Tin, iron, zinc, cadmium, manga¬ 
nese, and their binary compounds 
retain oxygen and decompose water 
at high temperatures. 

Potassium, sodium, and other al¬ 
kaline metals decompose water at 
the common temperature, and ab¬ 
sorb oxygen at all temperatures. 
They are called metals, but it may 
be doubted whether they are other 
than supersaturated inflammables, 
such being the process by which 
they are artificially formed, either 
by galvanism, or other combina 
tion. 

There are also five artificial me¬ 
tals derived from earths, but these 
and the six alkaline substances be¬ 
long as metals rather to theory than 
to nature. The natural metals are 
twenty-eight in number. 

Silica is the basis of the mineral 
world, and carbon of the organized. 

Pure silex or silicon is a dark 
brown solid without lustre, and in¬ 
fusible. 

Silex is acidulous and electro-ne¬ 
gative in its affinities. F>y its insi¬ 
nuating powers it renders bodies 
acidulous or electro-negative in va¬ 
rious degrees, down to potass, the 
highest electrick positive or alkaline 
substance. These terms electro-po¬ 
sitive, and electro-negative, being 
equivalent to the acid and alkaline 
of the last generation of chymists. 
Electricity itself being nothing more 





130 


CI-IYMISTRY. 


than a mechanical separation of the 
same pure and abstract elements. 

Charcoal is made by burning piles 
of wood, and stopping out the air, 
in the manner of brick-kilns, or by 
exposing wood in sand in a crucible 
to a strong heat. 

Charcoal destroys the taste, co¬ 
lour and smell of many substances. 
Vinegar boiled with it becomes lim¬ 
pid, and it destroys the colour and 
flavour of rum and other liquors; it 
also restores putrid water and tainted 
meat. Charcoal fires are dangerous 
in close apartments, for the oxygen 
is combined or fixed by it. 

If charcoal from any wood is 
heated, it becomes a common ele¬ 
mentary substance called Carbon, 
which absorbs moisture, air, and ox¬ 
ygen and hydrogen gases. If heated 
to 800 degrees in oxygen gas, the 
combination of the two is called car- 
bonick acid gas, or fixed air, the spe- 
cifick gravity of which is 1.518. It 
also unites with hydrogen called 
carbureted hydrogen, and its spe- 
cifick gravity is 0.555, the weight of 
100 cubick inches being seventeen 
grains, and this is the gas which is 
prepared at the gas works for pur¬ 
poses of illumination. Its combustion 
absorbs twice its weight of oxygen. 

Sulphur, a volcanick product, has 
not been decomposed, and is there¬ 
fore assumed to be a simple elemen¬ 
tary substance. Its specifick gravity 
is 1.99. If heated a little above boil¬ 
ing water it becomes a brown trans¬ 
parent oil, and if burnt and the va¬ 
pour condensed, it is sulphurick acid 
or a compound of sulphur and ox¬ 
ygen, in the proportion of one part 
sulphur to one and a-half oxygen ; 
and when the proportions are equal 
it is call d sulphurous acid; when 
sulphur is combined with hydrogen, 
it forms sulphureted hydrogen gas 
of the density of oxygen. As sul¬ 
phur burns, i. e. fixes oxygen, it evi¬ 
dently contains hydrogen. 

Sulphur burns with a pale blue 
light at 185 degrees ; but it fixes so 
little oxygen, that is, creates so little 
heat that it may be burned at that 
heat in the gunpowder of which it is 
a part. Its vapours whiten silk and 
straw. Hydro-sulphurick acid is ob¬ 
tained by burning eight parts of 
sulphur and one of nitre in close ves¬ 


sels containing water, which ab¬ 
sorbs the fumes. Evaporation yields 
oil of vitriol, which decomposes ani¬ 
mal and vegetable substances, ow¬ 
ing to its affinity for the water 
which they contain, and converts 
them into charcoal. Its concen¬ 
trated state at a specifick gravity of 
1.85 contains 81 per cent, of acid. 

Acids and alkalies are to each 
other like negative and positive, and 
when mixed in equal proportions 
neutralize each other, and when neu¬ 
tralized, are in equal proportions. 

Acids change blue, purple, and 
greeij colours of vegetables into red ; 
and neutralize alkalies and earth. 
The elementary principle is oxygen. 
There are eighteen mineral acids, 
nine vegetable, and five animal. 

Salts are compounds of acids 
with alkalies, earths and metallick 
oxydes: when the acid contains one 
degree of oxygen it terminates with 
ite, and when with higher degrees 
with ate. These are the generick 
names, and the name of the base of 
the salt is also added as muriate of 
ammonia or phosphate of lime from 
muriatick acid and ammonia, and 
from phosphorick acid and lime: 
thus there are muriates from muri¬ 
atick acid, fluates from fluorick acid, 
borates from boracick acid, and phos¬ 
phates from phosphorick acid, sul¬ 
phates from sulphurick acid, car¬ 
bonates from carbonick acid, ni¬ 
trates from nitrick acid, oxymurates 
from oxymuriatick acid, arceniates 
from arsenick acid, oxalates from ox- 
alick acid, tartrates from tartarick 
acid, prussiates from prussick acid, 
&c. besides phosphites, sulphites, and 
nitrites for lower degrees of acidity. 

Iodine is a simple substance, of 
the specifick gravity of nearly five; 
its odour is like chlorine, and it is 
very active. It is of a violet colour, 
easily evaporates, and melts at 220 
degrees ; changes vegetable blues to 
yellow, and a seven-thousandth part 
converts water to a deep yellow co¬ 
lour, and starch into a purple. Five 
volumes of oxygen and one of iodine 
form iodick acid. It is made from 
kelp, of a dark gray colour and 
metallick lustre, and in its gaseous 
state is purple. 

Magnesia is made from Epsom 
salts, by putting potash into a solu- 





CHYM1STRY. 131 


tion of it in water; the precipitation 

is magnesia. 

Fluorick acid is a product of Der¬ 
byshire spar and sulphurick acid. 
Its specifick gravity is 1.06, and is 
very corrosive. It etches and cor¬ 
rodes glass. 

The basis of phosphorus is cal¬ 
cined bones, digested with sulphur¬ 
ick acid, &c. &c. 

Alkalies have the power of chang¬ 
ing the blue vegetable juices to 
green, the green to yellow, the yel¬ 
low to orange, the orange to red, and 
the red to purple. Acids change vege¬ 
table blues to red. Chlorine destroys 
all colours. 

Alkalies consist of ammonia, pot¬ 
ash, soda, and lithia. The alkaline 
earths are lime, magnesia, barytes, 
and strontian. The neutral earths 
are silica, allumina, ytria, glucina, 
and zirconia. 

100 of pure potash are equal to 70 
of concentrated sulphurick acid, and 
thus they are mutual tests. 

Nitre or salpetre consists of six 
parts of oxygen, one of nitrogen, and 
one of potash. It is chiefly brought 
from the east, but it may be obtained 
by mixing the rubbish of old build¬ 
ings with animal and vegetable mat¬ 
ter, exposing them to the air in a dry 
place for some months. It is always i 
a product of animal matter and of 
calcareous soil, and constitutes 75 of 
100 parts of common gunpowder, 
the other 25 parts being half char¬ 
coal, and half sulphur. 

Ammonia is a compound of hydro¬ 
gen and nitrogen, and usually called 
volatile alkali Davy, after galvaniz¬ 
ing soda and potash, made an ex¬ 
periment to prove that there was 
oxygen in ammonia. 

Davy, by compounding the gal- 
vanick elements with these alkaline 
earths, made substances which he 
called metals, as calcium, from lime, 
magnium, barium, and strontium. 
These from their earthy base proved 
heavier than the alkaline metals. * 

Allumina is the chief constituent 
of clay ; it combines with li nr, and 
hence the use of lime in iron stone. 

Lime is obtained by burning parts 
of rocks and mountains which are 
often composed of it. When burnt, 
it is corrosive, and tinges blue vege¬ 


table infusions green; it is slacked 
by pouring water upon it, which be¬ 
coming fixed and solid, gives out the 
excitement or heat which rendered 
it fluid. This is the cause of the heat 
which accompanies the slacking of 
lime; one-fourth in weight being 
water. Limestone, in its native state, 
is united with carbonick acid, which 
the burning drives off. Water then 
swells it and reduces it to powder, 
in which state it is converted into 
mortar, after which it combines with 
carbonick acid, and hardens again. 
Limestone by calcination, parts with 
44 per cent, of its weight in car¬ 
bonick acid gas. In slacking, it 
doubles in bulk, and imbibes the hy¬ 
drogen of the water as mortar ; and 
consists of 31 parts water and 100 
lime. 

Thenard enumerates 28 gases at 
the freezing point of water. Chlo¬ 
rine and its compounds are green, 
and nitrous vapour red. Hydrochlo- 
rick, fluoborick, fluosiliseck, and hy- 
driodick produce white vapoui'3. In¬ 
flammable gases, are hydrogen and 
its sulphurets, arsenurets, tellurets, 
selenurets, and potassurets; also 
hydrurets of phosphorus and of car¬ 
bon, carbonick oxyde, cyanogen. 
Supporters of flame, are oxygen, ox¬ 
yde of azote, and chlorine. Acid gases 
which redden litmus are sulphurous, 
fluoborick, fluosilicick, hydriodick, 
hydrochlorick, carbonick, and chlo- 
ro-carbonick. Sulphurets and tel¬ 
lurets of hydrogen, and cyanogen, 
oxyde of chlorine, destroy ihe red 
which they first produce. Oxygen, 
azote-hydrogen, hydruret of carbon, 
carbonick acid, and oxyde of azole, 
have little odour, compared with 
others. Those soluble in one thir¬ 
tieth of water are fluoborick, fluosi¬ 
licick, hydrochlorick, hydriodick, sul¬ 
phurous acid, and ammonia. The 
acid gases, sulphurets, and tellurets 
of hydrogen, chlorine, cyanogen, and 
ammonia are soluble in alkaline mix¬ 
tures ; and alkaline gas in ammonia. 

The term gas, is German for ghost, 
and was first applied by V an Hel- 
mont and Mayow, who discovered 
their existence, but did not analyzs 
them. All of them owe their exist¬ 
ence to their own intestine motion, 
and if this is artificially or mecha¬ 
nically destroyed, they return to a 
fluid or solid state. 





132 


CHYMISTRY. 


Galileo discovered the weight of 
the atmosphere; Boyle its elastick 
character and connexion with sound. 
Priestley, Scheele, and Mayow, in 
1774, investigated its chymical rela¬ 
tion. Its weight is to water as 1 to 
828, and 100 cubick inches weigh 
30.5 grains, the bar. 30, and ther. 60. 

A bulk of 1000 at 32 degrees, be¬ 
comes 1152 at 100 degrees, 1376 at 
212 degrees, and 2797 at 1000 degrees. 
It consists of 79 azote or nitrogen, 
and 21 of oxygen or vital air in bulk. 
And their specifick gravities being 
1.093 and .978, so 100 parts in weight 
are 77.44 of azote, and 22.57 of oxy¬ 
gen. 

Chymists have been much divided 
about the proportions of oxygen and 
nitrogen in atmospherick air. Some 
make it 21 to 79. Some 22 to 78; 
and others, 22.9 and 77.1. 

Air, with the barometer at 30 
inches, and the thermometer at 55, is 
833 times heavier than water, and a 
cubick foot of it weighs 1.2 ounces 
avoirdupois; Ahe weight of a cubick 
foot of water being 1000 ounces; and 
a cubick foot of quicksilver 13600. 
Air will expand above 13000 times ; 
air expands from .00209 at 1 deg., to 
1 at 32 deg., 1.0476 at 54 deg., and 
1.378 or 1.4 at 180 deg.; and all the 
gases expand in like proportion, or a 
480th for every degree. 

The pressure of the air keeps the 
gas among the atoms of fluids ; and 
when removed, the gas escapes, and 
the atoms crystallize, as in freezing 
water under an air-pamp. 

A middle sized man consumes 
46000 cubick inches, or 26 cubick 
feet, or nearly a cubick yard of oxy¬ 
gen per day, making 20 respirations 
in a minute, and 1.6 cubick inch at 
each. 

The weight of the atmosphere 
compresses water about the 22000th 
of its bulk : spirits of wine the 15000th 
part; and mercury the 33000th part. 
The pressure of water at the depth of 
500 fathoms, diminishes the bulk of 
the water a 27th. 

Air contains about a 1200th part 
of carbonick acid gas, and a 70th 
of aqueous vapour. The causes of 
marshy and pestilential vapours have 
not been determined, but they yield 
to re-agents, as nitrick acid and oxy- 
muriatick fumes. 


The weight and elastick force of 
air raise water, in an exhausted tube r 
33 to 35 feet, and quicksilver from 28 
to 31 inches, a force equal to 15 lbs. 
to the square inch, or 20560 lbs. to the 
square foot. The weight of the whole 
atmosphere is thus, 12 quadrillion 
pounds. 

A cubick foot of air weighs oz., 
hence, a column a mile high, and one 
inch base, weighs 43.2 ounces, and 
15 lbs. are equal to 5} miles. It dimi¬ 
nishes in weight as the distance, and 
in elastick force or reaction as the 
bulk or cube of the distance, together 
as the fourth power; but in density 
as the logarithm of the height; 
hence, at 44 miles, where it ceases to 
reflect the atmosphere, its density is 
considered but a 10000th of that at 
the surface. 

Taking platina as 19.5 of water, 
and air as .0012, a cubick inch of pla¬ 
tina is equal to 16350 cubick inches 
of air, and to 221000 of hydrogen as 
.0735 of air. Consequently, if platina 
were volatilized into hydrogen, and 
its atoms were as platina, the 10 
millionth of an inch asunder, the 
same atoms as hydrogen would be 
but the 50th of an inch asunder. 
Water as steam at 285 degrees is 
72000 times its own bulk, i. e. 3 mil¬ 
lion times rarer than platina; and 
coeteris paribus, its atoms nearly the 
third of an inch asunder. 

Air, of the density of that near the 
earth, would be opaque in a thick¬ 
ness of seventeen miles. 

Atmospherick air at a heat of 1035 
degrees, expands 2| times. 

Air at the freezing point increases 
100th part in bulk at 37 degrees, a 
50th part at 42 degrees, a 20th at 60 
degrees, a 7th at 100 degrees, a 3d 
at 190 degrees, and 0.37 at 212 de¬ 
grees. 

Fluids consist of minute atoms se¬ 
arated by gases, and the motion of 

ea.t creates this one degree of gasifi¬ 
cation, while another degree con¬ 
verts the whole into gas. 

100 cubick inches of atmospherick 
air weigh 30.5 grains, of oxygen 
33.8, hydrogen 2.1, nitrogen 29.7, 
chlorine 76.3. 

The aqueous vapour in atmos¬ 
pherick air seems essential to animal 
and vegetable life; the dried winds 
of Africa called Harmattan being 







very destructive. At 65 deg. one 
sixtieth is vapour, and at SO deg. a 
cubick foot contains 12 grains of wa¬ 
ter. Hydrogen contains a 7th of its 
weight, oxygen the 110th, and car- 
bonick acid the 140th. 

100 cubick inches of air at 57 deg. 
contain 0.35 of a grain of moisture. 

Under a receiver thoroughly ex¬ 
hausted, rare and dense bodies fall 
with equal swiftness. Most animals 
die in a minute or two, but some am¬ 
phibia live hours. Vegetation stops, 
combustion ceases, gunpowder will 
not explode, magnets are equally 
powerful, smoke descends, water 
and other fluids turn to vapour, glow¬ 
worms give no light, a bell sounds 
very faintly, heat is slightly trans¬ 
mitted. 

Wilkins and Lana first suggested 
the idea of ascending in the atmo¬ 
sphere by rarefied air, and one Ga- 
Iien of Avignon, in 1755 wrote a 
pamphlet on aerostation. 

The first balloon of Stephen and 
Joseph Montgolfier, was a silk bag 
containing forty feet, which burning 
paper raised seventy feet. Their next 
was a bag of 650 feet, which rose 600 
feet. Their third was 35 feel in dia¬ 
meter, and was capable of raising 
500 pounds. It was raised before the 
publick, June 5, 1783. On the 21st 
of November, Pilatre de Rosier and 
the Marquis d’Arlandes ascended at. 
Paris, and afterwards others, with 
air rarefied in the car by heat. 

In December 1783, Messrs. Roberts 
and Charles ascended in a balloon 
inflated with inflammable gas, and 
after them Blanchard, Morveau, the 
Due d’Orleans, and others. In Sep¬ 
tember 1784, Lunardi made the first 
human ascent in England. 

In January 1785, Blanchard and 
Jeffries passed from Dover to Calais, 
and soon after Rozier and Romaine 
perished in an attempted voyage 
from Bologne to England. In Sep¬ 
tember 1802, Garnarin descended 
from a parachute near London. 

On the 6th of September, 1804, 
Gay Lussac ascended at Paris to the 
height of 23000 feet. 

The superficies of a balloon is com¬ 
puted by multiplying the square of 
its diameter by 3.146, or the cubick 
contents is the cube by .5236. Tak¬ 
ing atmospherick air at 1.2 oz. to 


the cubick foot, we have the weight 

in air, and then, as carbureted hy¬ 
drogen gas weighs 0.2, the weight 
multiplied by 0.2 gives the power of 
ascension, deducting the weight of 
the car, ropes, silk, &c. 

Oxygen, the supporter of vitality 
and fire, was first discriminated aa 
a distinct gas by Priestley, in 1774. 
Its existence was known to Scheele 
as empyrial air ; but as the apparent 
antagonist of combustible gas or 
Stahl’s phlogiston, he callecf it de- 
phlogisticatea air. 21 parts of it are 
in 100 parts of atmospherick air, and 
it is one eighth or one ninth heavier. 
100 cubick inches of the latter weigh 
30£ grains troy, and the same mea¬ 
sure of oxygen weighs from 33 to 34 
grains. Oxygen is obtained by simply 
heating black oxyde of manganese. 

Acids change vegetable blues to 
red, and in combination with other 
bodies form salts. Their general 
principle is oxygen in combination. 
One proportion of oxygen has a ter¬ 
mination crus ; and a further propor¬ 
tion has a termination ic. 

When oxygen is combined with 
any substance, and not acid, it is 
called an oxyde; and when rendered 
acid, the combination is called an 
acid. Water is a combination, 7 of 
oxygen with 1 of .hydrogen, there¬ 
fore called an oxyde of hydrogen. It 
may be decomposed by charcoal at 
a red heat ; as in slacking lime, it 
sometimes combines with the solid, 
w r hich is then called a hydrate. It 
boils at 212 deg. and generates elas- 
tick steam 1800 times its own bulk. 
A cubick foot is taken at 1000 oz., 
but is ten elevenths of an ounce less. 
A cubick inch weighs, at 40 degrees, 
252.953; and at 60 deg. by expan¬ 
sion, is but 252.72 grains. 

When carbonick acid gas is lique¬ 
fied, its elastick force at 12 deg. is 
equal to 20 atmospheres, and at 32 
deg. to 36. 

Carbonick acid gas is a compound 
of 72 of oxygen and 28 of charcoal. 
It forms one-thousandth part of the 
atmospherick air, and is chiefly gen¬ 
erated by combustion and the res¬ 
piration of animals. Its specifick 
gravity is 1.518. 

Carbonick acid gas is a product of 
fermentation, and being heavier than 
air it lies over all fermentive pro- 






134 


CHYMISTRY. 


cesses, puts out a candle, and pro¬ 
duces suffocation. At the bottom of 
wells and coal mines it causes the 
choke-damp, in which a light wi 1 
not burn, but which may be dispers¬ 
ed by throwing water into it. It is 
carbureted hydrogen which takes 
fire in coal mines, and which, under 
the name of fire-damp, destroys so 
many miners. 

Hydrogen, the phlogiston of Scheele 
and Priestley, is that gas which, 
when excited, immediately com¬ 
bines with oxygen and produces 
flame, by which the oxygen dis¬ 
appears, and a new concentrated 
substance is produced. Prom this 
connexion with flame Cavendish 
called it inflammable air, but it is 
now called hydrogen, because in 
bulk it is the chief constituent of 
water. It is contained in all bodies 
which burn with flame, and is sepa¬ 
rately produced by pouring dilute 
sulphurick acid upon iron filings. It 
is thirteen times lighter than com¬ 
mon air; for 100 cubick inches of it 
weigh but 2.5 grains. Water is a 
compound of oxygen and hydrogen, 
in the proportion of 7.5 grains of 
oxygen to 1 of hydrogen. 

Sulphureted hydrogen is poison¬ 
ous, and the 250th part of it in the 
atmosphere has killed a horse. It 
tarnishes metals; it gives the flavour 
of rotten eggs to water, like that of 
Harrowgate. 

Priestley discovered nitrogen to be 
the other component of the atmos¬ 
phere. It is also called azote. It is the 
gas that remains after atmospherick 
air has been deprived of its oxygen; 
and it is found to be nearly four- 
fifths of the volume, or as 79 to 21. 
This separation maybe effected by 
putting sulphur and iron filings into 
a close vessel; and they absorb the 
oxygen and leave the nitrogen. Its 
specifick gravity is .097, or rather 
lighter than common air. It appears 
in the atmosphere to dilute the oxy¬ 
gen or vital gas, for by itself it de¬ 
stroys flame and animal life. 

Chlorine is an artificial gas: it is 
made by mixing three parts of sea 
salt with ono of black oxyde (perox- 
yde) of manganese, and pouring on 
them four parts of sulphurick acid 
and water, in equal proportions. 
Then, by heat, the gas is evolved, 
of a yellowish-green colour, and of¬ 


fensive smell. lbO cubick inches of 
this gas weigh 76.3 grains. 

1 chlorine (36) —J- 1 of hydrogen (1) 
form muriatick acid gas (37); 100 
cubick inches of this gas, are form¬ 
ed of 50 cubick inches, or 38.1 grains of 
chlorine, and 50 cubick inches, or 
1.05 grains of hydrogen, and, there 
fofe, weighing 39.15 grains. 

1 chi. (36) -jy 1 ox. (8) make prot- 
oxydeof chlorine (44); and 4 of ox. 
make peroxyde (68); of 8 of ox. per- 
chlorick acid (100.) The chloride of 
nitrogen (158) is 4 chi. -j- 1 nit., and 
an oily fluid, very explosive and com¬ 
bustible. 

As the chlorine gas supports com¬ 
bustion, it has been considered as a 
combination with another substance, 
which increases its density to 2.713. 
that of air being 1.C00, and that of 
oxygen being 1.120. Some chym- 
ists maintain that it is an original 
simple substance. 

The five heaviest gases are— 


Chloric k gas.2.47 

Nitrick acid gas ..... 2.427 
Sulphurous acid gas . . 2.097 

Vapour of ether.2.25 

Vapour of alcohol .... 2.1 
The four lightest gases are— 
Carbureted hydrogen . . 0.555 
Arsenical hydrogen . . . 0.529 
Phosphureted hydrogen 0.352 
Hydrogen.0.074 


1 carbureted hydrogen explodes 
with 5 oxygen. 

Gases mix equally, and when 
mixed do not separate. Dalton as¬ 
cribes this to the particles being of 
different sizes. 

Water,•by weight, is 1 of hydro¬ 
gen and 7i of oxygen; and by bulk 
2 of hydrogen and l of oxygen. 

Sulphurick ether consists of— 


Carbon .. 58.2 

Hydrogen. 22.14 

Oxygen. 19.66 

Alcohol consists of— 

Oxygen.37.85 

Carbonate.43.65 

Hydrogen.14.94 

Azote . 3.52 

Ashes . 0.04 

Nitrick ether consists of— 

Oxygen.48.52 

Carbon.28.45 

Azote.14.49 

Hydrogen. 8.54 


















CHEMISTRY. 


Muriatick ether consists of— 


Muriatick acid .... 

. 29.44 

Carbon. 

. 35.61 

Cfxygen. 

. 23.31 

Hydrogen. 

. 10.64 

Acetick acid, or distilled 

vinegar, 

is composed of— 


Oxygen. 

44.147 

Hydrogen. 

5.629 

Carbon. 

50.224 

Oxalick acid is composed of— 

Oxygen . 

70.689 

Hydrogen . 

2.745 

Carbon. 

26.566 

Tartarick acid consists of— 

Oxygen. 

69.321 

Hydrogen. 

6.629 

Carbon. 

24.05 

Citrick acid, prepared : 

from the 

juice of lemons, consists of- 


Oxygen. 

59.859 

Hydrogen . 

6.33 

Carbon. 

33.811 

The substance of brain consists of 

the following constituents:- 


Water. 

■ 80. 

White fatty matter • • ■ 

■ 4.53 

Red ditto. 

• 0.7 

Albumen. 

• 7. 

Osmazomc. 

■ 1.12 

Phosphorus. 

■ 1.5 

Salts and Sulphur • • • 

5.15 

Wax consists of— 



Carbon. 

• 81.784 

Hydrogen • • • • 

12.672 

Oxygen. 

5.544 

osin consists of— 
Carbon. 

• • 76 

Oxygen. 

• • 13 

Hydrogen • • • • 

• • 11 


Copal consists of carbon 77, oxy¬ 
gen 11, and hydrogen 12. 

Oak wood contains 42 oxygen, 52 
carbon, and six hydrogen. 

Beech contains 43 oxygen, 51 car¬ 
bon, and six hydrogen. 

Wheat and barley contain as un¬ 
der : 

wheat barley 


Silica. 13.2 66.7 

Carbonate of lime • 12.6 24.8 

Carbonate of magnesia 13.4 25.3 

Allumina. .6 4.2 

Oxyde of manganese 5. 6.7 

Oxyde of iron ~ • 2.5 3.8 


The quantity of each being 2 lbs. 

Oats contain silica 144.2, and rye 
straw 152 silica. 

One-twelfth of wheat is gluten. 


_ 135 

which consists of oxygen, hydrogen, 
azote, and carbon. 

Autumnal wheat contains 77 
starch and 19 gluten; spring wheat, 
70 starch, 24 gluten. 

Starch contains from 38£ to 45 of 
carbon, from 6 to 7 of hydrogen, and 
from 48£ to 55 of oxygen. 

168 potato starch consist of oxygen 
49.455; carbon 43.481; and hydro¬ 
gen 7.034. 

Mucilage from 36 to 45 of carbon, 
from 5£ to 7 of hydrogen, and from 
48 to 55 of oxygen. 

Sugar from 37J to 43£ of carbon, 
from 6£ to 7 of hydrogen, and 50J to 
55| of oxygen, according to the ana¬ 
lyses of five or six different chym- 
ists. 

Fermented sugar and water con¬ 
sists of 57 parts alchohol and 43 car- 
bo nick acid. 

Sugar itself, per Berzelius, is7hy- 
drogen, 44 carbon, and 49 oxygen. 

Alcohol, 14 hydrogen, 52 carbon, 
and 34 oxygen. 

Carbonick acid, carbon 27, oxygen 
73. 

The real quantity of alkali con¬ 
tained in the substances used in 
bleaching, of 100 parts is 

American pearlashes 60 to 73 
Russian pearlashes 52 to 58 
White Dantzic do • 45 to 52 
Alicant barilla • •• 20 to 33 

Natron.20 to 30 

Salt of tartar • ■ • 72 
Common Salt • • • 53 

Barley contains 43 parts of vola¬ 
tile matter, 72 of husk, and 269 of 
meal, of which last 20 are saccharine 
matter. A bushel weighs 50 lbs. 
and a grain is the third of an inch. 

Ammonia is called volatile alkali; 
and potash and soda fixed alkalies. 
Ammonia is a compound of 

81.5 azote 

18.5 hydrogen 

by weight; and in bulk three parts 
of hydrogen for one of azote. Am- 
moniacal gas passed through burning 
charcoal becomes Prussick acid. 
When combined withoxydes of gold 
or silver it renders them fulmina¬ 
ting. Potash, or fixed vegetable 
alkali, is procured from the ashes of 
vegetables exposed to the air; it runs 
into liquid, and is very acrid and cor¬ 
rosive. Its speciffck gravity is 1.7. 

































136 


CHYMISTRY. 


Soda is a mineral alkali, but may be 
procured like potash from ashes. Its 
specifick gravity is 1.34. 

Albumen is an animal substance, 
of which the white of an egg is an 
example. It becomes a white co¬ 
agulate at 165 deg., and if acids are 
united to it. It contains 53 carbon, 
24 oxygen, 7 hydrogen, and 16 nitro¬ 
gen. 

Animal substances, besides the 
principles of vegetables, yield am¬ 
monia, sulphur, and phosphorus, and 
their compounds with carbon. 

Oil and fat are compounds of car¬ 
bon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Fat 
consists of two substances, one 
which melts at 50 deg. and the other 
at 105 deg.; the former oil and the 
latter suet. Butter made in summer 
contains 60 of oil and 40 of suet; but 
in winter 37 of oil and 63 of suet. 
Goose grease contains 68 of oil and 
32 of suet. Olive oil contains 72 of 
oil and 28 of suet. 

The perspiration from an animal 
body consists of water, carbonick, 
acetick, and phosphorick acids and 
soda. 

The curd of cheese consists of 60 
carbon, 11 oxygen, 7 hydrogen, and 
22 nitrogen. 

Olive oil contains 76 parts of car¬ 
bon, 12 of oxygen and hydrogen, and 
9 of hydrogen in excess. 

Olive or table oil contains 


Carbon.77.213 

Oxygen.9.427 

Hydrogen.13.36 


Naptha is a bituminous oil, clear 
as water, and very volatile. Its spe¬ 
cifick gravity is 0.8. Petrolium is 
darker than naptha, and obtained 
by distilling coals. 

Tar, pitch, asphaltum, and pit- 
coal, are natural bitumens. 

Precipitate of mercury consists of 
100 parts mercury, and 8 of oxygen. 

Sulphuret of mercury consists of 
200 mercury and 16 sulphur. 

Vermilion is 400 mercury and 32 
sulphur. 

Calomel is 200 mercury and 36 
chlorine. 

Corrosive sublimate is 200 mercury 
and 72 chlorine. 

Sugar of lead is 112 lead and 50 
acetick acid. 


White vitriol is 40 parts sulphurick 
acid and 41 zinc. 

Urinary calculi contains six»acidu- 
lous combinations besides magnesia; 
silica and urea, urick acid, phosphate 
of lime and magnesia, and oxalate of 
iron are the principal. 

Alcohol is the spirit of wine ob¬ 
tained from the. distillation of fer¬ 
mented liquors, and from wine is 
called brandy; from the sugar-cane, 
rum; from malt or grain, whiskey 
and gin. The different flavours 
arise from the quantity of oil or re¬ 
sin, the bases being alcohol and wa¬ 
ter. Further distillation produces 
rectified spirits, the specifick gravity 
of which is about .85; but by fur¬ 
ther rectification it may be carried to 
0.795. Pure alcohol is quite colour¬ 
less and transparent; it never freezes, 
but evaporates spontaneously, boil¬ 
ing at 173? deg. Proof spirits are 
0.92. When the gravity is higher 
they are under proof, when lower 
above proof. Perfectly pure alcohol 
is about 0.74. The flame is blue, 
and it leaves no residuum. The va¬ 
pours consist of carbonick acid and 
water, and the bulk of water is 
greater than the alcohol. 


Professor Brande’s analysis of 
the quantity per cent, of alcohol, or 
pure spirit, in the folio wing liquors :— 

Scotch whiskey.54.32 

Irish.53.9 

Rum.53.68 

Brandy.53.39 

Gin.51.6 

Port. 22.9 

Madeira .22.27 

Currant .20.55 

Teneriffe.19.79 

Sherry.*.19.17 

Claret...15.1 

Champagne.13.8 

Gooseberry.11.84 

Elder. 8.79 

Ale. 6.87 

Porter. 4.2 

Cider .9.8 to 5.2 


Rochelle salts consist of 54 tar¬ 
trate of potash, and 45 tartrate of 
soda. 


Seawater contains 1.35 of muriate 
of soda, .004 of muriate of magnesia, 
.0025 of Epsom salts, and .00125 of 
gypsum. It obstructs all light at 120 
fathoms. 


Urine contains no less than twelve 
























137 


CHYMlSTRY. 


acidulous combinations, besides sul¬ 
phur, resin, urea, albumen, and wa¬ 
ter when healthy; but in disease, 
other substances. 

Thirty-eight several substances 
have been found in various mineral 
waters. The acidulous abound in 
carbonick acid. The chalybeate in 
iron. The hepatick in sulphureted 
hydrogen. The saline in salts. 

Bristol or Clifton hot wells water 
is 74£ deg., and its specifick gravity 
1.00077. A gallon contains 43f grains 
of sulphate of soda, sulphate of lime, 
and carbonate of lime, and four 
grains of muriate of soda. Also, 
30 cubick inches of carbonick acid 
gas. 

Buxton water is 82 deg.; and a 
gallon contains 11£ grains of calca¬ 
reous earth, of vitriolick selenite, 
2 of sea salt and azotick gas. 

The waters of Aix-la-Chapelle con¬ 
tain 4.75 carbonate of lime, 5 muriate 
of soda, and 12 carbonate of soda. 
The gas is sulphureted hydrogen. 

Alphabetical arrangement of some 
substances, fyc. 

Acids change purples and blues to 
red. 

Alkalies change blue vegetable 
colours to green, and brown to yel¬ 
low. There are three, potass, soda, 
and ammonia. They unite with 
acids and form neutral salts, and 
with oils form soap. 

Prussick acid is a deadly poison ob¬ 
tained from Prussian blue. It is 
colourless, but smells like peach 
flowers, and freezes at 2 degrees, and 
very volatile. It turns vegetable 
blues into red. 

Alabaster is the old name for cer¬ 
tain kinds of gypsum, and that of 
Volterra is semi-transparent. 

AUumina is often called argil. 

Alum ox sulphate of iron, is a salt 
used as a mordant in tanning, to 
harden tallow, and in whitening 
bread. It may be made of pure 
clay, exposed to vapours of sulphu- 
rick acid, and sulphate of potash ad¬ 
ded to the lie. But it is usually ob¬ 
tained by means of ore called alum 
slate. 

Amalgam is quicksilver combined 
with metal, generally tin. 


Some suppose ambergris to be an¬ 
cient bees’ wax extricated from strata 
by the ocean. 

The best anemometers are those of 
Dr. Lind and Dr. Brewster. 

The fluids of animal bodies in their 
chymical properties, are watery, al¬ 
buminous, mucous, oleaginous, re¬ 
sinous, saline, gelatinous, and fibri¬ 
nous. Of these the solids are con¬ 
tinued secretions in laminae, and 
fibres or filaments, or tissues. 

Aquafortis is nitrick acid withsul- 
phurick and muriatick. 

Aqua regia is two of nitrick and 
one of muriatick. 

Argol or archel is a colouring sub¬ 
stance obtained from lichens, used 
by dyers to improve other colours. 
It is brought from Elba and the Le¬ 
vant. 

Arnatto is a dying substance, pre¬ 
pared from reeds which grow in the 
West Indies and Cayenne. 

Arrack is made from the juice of 
the tops of cocoa nut and palmyra 
trees. At Batavia it is made from 
paddee, rice in the husk. 

The air pump effects a rarefaction 
from a 500th to a 2000th, and seldom 
much higher. 

Sulphuret of antimony is used in 
pharmacy and called antimony , 
while the metal is called the regulus. 

Artificial teeth are made of the 
tooth of the sea horse, harder than 
ivory. 

Balloons are filled with carbureted 
hydrogen gas, and by the Gas Com¬ 
panies, for about 51. 

Balm of Gilead, or Balsam of 
Mecca, is made from the resin 
which exudes from incision in the 
bark of a plant belonging to the ge¬ 
nus amyris which grows near Mecca 
and in Abyssinia; its virtues are fre¬ 
quently extolled in the Jewish scrip¬ 
tures. The balsams of Tolu and 
Peru are made from resins which 
exude from South American plants. 
In the East its applications are va¬ 
rious. 

Nil rate of lime is Baldwin's phos¬ 
phorus. 

Bdl metal is three of copper and 
one of tin. 


2 






CHYMISTRY. 


138_ 

Blende is a native sulphuret of 
zinc. 

The bitter principle prevails in 
quassia, gentian, hops, chamomile, 
and some others; it has been made 
artificially by different chymists. 

Bone in its solid parts is phosphate 
of lime organized by membranes, 
arteries, veins, lymphaticks, and 
nerves, and in a state of constant 
change, like the rest of the body. 
Madder in food stains bones, and ab¬ 
stinence restores them, and the ves¬ 
sels so palpably convey the matter 
of bone, that in cases of necrosis or 
death of a bone, a new bone is formed 
as a case to the dead one, which 
may be taken away when the case 
becomes a perfect bone in all its 
functions. 

The brain and heart are the chief 
instruments of the lungs and are 
alike insensible. The cerebrum may 
be pressed or cut without pain, and 
in the time of Harvey, a young man 
had his heart exposed by a disease, 
and Harvey handled it without his 
fingers being felt. 

The lymph and serum is common 
to all Blood; but in insects it is 
transparent; in caterpillars green; 
in frogs yellow; in fish it is red in 
the vital organs and transparent at 
the extremities ; in man the red par¬ 
ticles are too large for some of the 
vessels, as the coats of the eye, the 
tendons, and serous membranes. It 
is deepest red in quadrupeds and less 
so in birds, while it varies in some, 
being deeper in the hare than the 
rabbit. In animals with a double : 
circulation, the venous blood is a 
dark Modena red, but the arterial is 
a light scarlet, and is the fluid on 
which depends excitement and sus¬ 
tenance. Venous is to water as 
1049 to 1000, and arterial as 1052. 
Disease makes it lighter, but in full 
health it rises to 1126, and Haller 
only, says to 1527. In man, it3 tem¬ 
perature is 98 degrees, in sheep 102, 
and in ducks 107, and the arterial is 
higher than the venous. In ague it 
falls from 98 to 94, and in fever rises 
to 102 or 105. In man the red par¬ 
ticles are the 5000th part of an inch. 
In birds larger, more so in reptiles, 
and larger still in fish, and largest in 
the skate. The arteries contain 
more than the veins, and the quan¬ 
tity increases with the temperature. 


The solid part after coagulation is 

the crassamentum or clot, and con¬ 
sists of the lymph or fibrin and the 
red particles, of which the first is the 
most important part of the blood 
constituting the solid parts of the 
body and the basis of the muscles. 
On separation, it floats in a fluid 
called serum or albumen like the 
white of an egg. Hunter ascribes 
life to the blood, that is, that the 
blood itself is alive ! The blood is 
a fifth of the weight of the body, and 
three-fourths are in the veins. 

ZinCj charcoal, and copper form 
Brass in the proportion of a third or 
fourth of zinc. 

Bronze is two parts brass and one 
copper, and the Greeks added one- 
fifteenth of lead and silver. 

Bronzing is a wash by composi¬ 
tion made by grinding gold leaf with 
honey which is washed from the 
gold with water; or it is made by 
combining sixteen parts of tin, eight 
of mercury, eight of sal ammoni- 
ack, and seven of flour of sulphur. 
Red lead gives it a copper shade. 
There are other preparations for 
bronzing different substances. 

Bromine is obtained from sea 
water and the ashes of sea weeds. 
It is red, poisonous, and very vola¬ 
tile. 

Brown's patent engine creates a 
vacuum by the alternate admission 
and combustion of carbonick oxyde 
gas, which he makes from water and 
coke. 

Butter melts at 96 degrees. It is 
formed by the act of churning and 
is not suspended or diluted in the 
cream, but is generated by contact 
with the air or some peculiar com¬ 
bination. 

Forty grains of mercury and ten 
and a half of chlorick gas form 
calomel . 

Carmine is made from cochineal. 

Carbonate of soda is formed by 
passing a current of carbonick acid 
into a solution of soda, and it be¬ 
comes a hard solid mass. Its crys¬ 
tals are octahedrons, with prismat- 
ick apexes. Carbonate of potash is 
made like the other with potash in¬ 
stead of soda. 

Caoutchouck , or Indian Rubber, is 





CHYMISTRY. 


13> 


formed of a gum which exudes by 

incision from two plants which grow 
in Cayenne and the Brazils, called 
fuevia caoutchouck, and the jatiopha 
elastica. The resinous substance, 
as it hardens being formed round 
clay moulds. The urceola which 
grows in the Indian seas also affords 
this gum as well as some other 
plants. Itsspecifick gravity is 0.9335. 
It is very inflammable; when dis¬ 
tilled it gives out ammonia, water, 
oil, and charcoal. In South America 
they make with it bottles, boots, 
torches, and also balls to play with. 

White oxyde of lead is ceruse. 

Carbonate of lime is chalk. 

Civet is an excrement taken from 
a glandular receptacle near the tail 
of the civet cat, chiefly the male; 
and they are kept and fed so as to 
increase the secretion. 

Chlorine gas destroys the volatile 
effluvia of putrefaction and infection; 
and a solution of the chloride of lime, 
is bleaching powder, and employed 
for this purpose. A table-spoonful, 
in a wine-glass of water, spread on 
a plate destroys all infection, and 
purifies the air of sick chambers, 
infected houses, removes smells from 
drains, privies, &c. 

The charcoal used in gunpowder 
is distilled in iron vessels, from wil¬ 
low, alder, and some other woods. 
100 parts of oak make 22 of char¬ 
coal ; of beech 20 ; of deal 19, glossy 
black ; of elm 19J, black; of ash 18, 
glossy black; birch 17, rich black. 

100 parts of shavings of dry wood 
produce one-fourth of charcoal by 
slow combustion. 

Chocolate is a preparation from the 
cocoa-nut, which is ground into pow¬ 
der made into cakes, and flavoured 
with spices. 

A chromate of potash and ammo- 
niacal sulphate of copper form the 
coloured transparent liquid with 
which apothecaries illumine their 
shops. 

21 cubick inches of chlorick gas 
and 40 grains of mercury, form cor¬ 
rosive sublimate. 

Green oxyde of copper is the rust 
of copper. 

Acidulous tartrite of potash is 
cream of tartar. 


Cream is the lighter unctuous pan 
of milk which rises to the top ; and 
by churning it is further separated 
into butter and buttermilk. Milk, 
when sour, may be fermented, and 
it will yield a vinous liquor ; and 
also take the acetous fermentation. 
Its constituents are water, oil, curd, 
gelatine, sugar of milk, muriates of 
soda and potash, phosphate of lime 
and sulphur. The cream is thick¬ 
est in the milk of the cow, goat, and 
ewe. In women and asses it is 
whiter and thinner, affording less 
cream and soft butter. Mare’s milk 
is like cows’, but it affords less cream 
and poor butter. 

Chloride of lime is the bleaching 
powder. Strata of slacked lime are 
exposed to the action of chlorine 
gas, in chambers; and the lime ab¬ 
sorbs the gas, which, of course, 
gives out much heat, and forms a 
white powder that destroys all co¬ 
lours. 

One part of mercury and two of 
sulphur become JEthiop’s mineral , 
now called sulphuret of mercury. 
When this is exposed to a red heat 
it forms cinnabar, which is the ver¬ 
milion used by the ladies. It con¬ 
sists of 85 parts of mercury, and 15 
of sulphur. 

The eau de vie of the French is 
white brandy, distilled from wine. 

Enamel is made of powdered 
glass, oxyde of lead and tin, and 
salt of tartar, with coloured sub¬ 
stances. 

Substances which chymists can¬ 
not analyze are called extract, or the 
extractive principle, and it appears 
in vegetable substances chiefly. 
The red of madder and the yellow 
of weld, is called extractive prin¬ 
ciple. 

The eudiometer is founded on the 
principle that the oxygen in the air 
combines with nitrous gas by which 
the bulk of the air is diminished in 
various degrees, so as to measure 
the quantity of oxygen previously 
combined with the azote. 

To prevent mischief from explo¬ 
sion in chymical experiments, it is 
usual to wrap the vessels in cloth. 

A candle makes a distinct flame 
in Xb.eflame of alcohol. 

Fulminating powder is 3 nitre, 2 




140 


CHYMISTRT. 


potass, 1 sulphur. Preparations of 
gold, silver, and mercury are also 
fulminating. 

There are three kinds oifermenta¬ 
tion, the vinous, acetous, and putre¬ 
factive, which generally succeed 
each other. The vinous fermenta¬ 
tion arises from the saccharine prin¬ 
ciple in sugar or malt. When sugar 
only, yest is necessary. At 32 deg. 
it stops, at 50 deg. is slow, and at 70 
becomes acetous. The gas disen¬ 
gaged is carbonick acid, carbon being 
carried off, and the atmospherick 
air being not absolutely necessary. ; 
Flavour arises from essential oils, 
and intoxicating properties from al¬ 
cohol. Thenard thinks that the 
carbon of vest abstracts the oxy¬ 
gen, and then the hydrogen and 
carbon of the sugar combine with 
the hydrogen ana nitrogen of the 
yest. The acetous follows the other, 
and the presence of air is necessary, 
and chymists conceive that the oxy¬ 
gen of the air combines with the 
carbon of the vinous fluid. The 
temperature rises .to 85 or 90 deg. 
The putrefactive affects all animal 
and vegetable substances. Air and 
heat are missing. Vegetables give 
out hydrogen and carbon, and un¬ 
der water the hydrogen only, and 
the residuum is charcoal; but in air 
the carbon becomes carbonick acid. 
Animal substances evolve the same 
—and ammonia, also sulphur and 
phosphorus in their unpleasant 
odours. 

Fluxes, in a large way, are lime 
or spar, and in the small way alka¬ 
lies, as nitre and tartar. 

'The foil of looking-glass is tin and 
quicksilver. Globes are foliated by 
the addition of quicksilver and lead. 

Gin is malt spirits, flavoured with 
oil of turpentine, combined with va¬ 
rious substances. Geneva or Hol¬ 
lands is made from wheat, and fla¬ 
voured with juniper berries. 

Gems consist of silex, lime, and 
oxyde of iron. The ruby, sapphire, 
and topaz are essentially the same, 
but so distinguished by clealers from 
their colours, &c. 

Glass is formed by combining, in 
a state of fusion, fixed alkalies with 
silica, and the occasional addition of 
litharge, oxyde of iron, or manga¬ 
nese. That called flint glass is made 


of fixed alkalies, calcined flints, and 
litharge or oxyde of lead. Ground 
glass is made of fixed alkali and sili¬ 
ceous sand, with oxyde of iron for a 
green tinge, or oxyde of manganese 
for a purple tinge. Bottle glass con¬ 
sists of lime fused with silica and 
allumina, with iron and manganese. 

Flint glass is generally made of 
100 sand, 6 red lead, and 3 pearlash, 
with some manganese to correct the 
green colour. 

Plate glass is made of 43 sand, 
26.5 sub-carbonate of soda, 4 quick¬ 
lime, 1.5 nitre, and 25 broken glass, 
which make 75 of glass. 

Crown glass is made of 50 sand 
and 110 kelp. 

Bottle glass is made of soap-boil¬ 
ers’ waste and river sand; or of sand, 
lime, clay, and sea salt. 

Oxyde of cobalt tinges glass green; 
oxyde of iron or copper, green; of 
manganese, violet; of iron and cop¬ 
per, red; of gold, purple; of silver, 
yellow; and of arsenick and zinc, 
white. 

Gallick acid is the astringent prin¬ 
ciple. It is formed from nut-galls, a 
substance formed on oak trees. 

Glue, size, and isinglass are various 
forms of animal gelatine. Carpen¬ 
ters’ glue is made of the skins of ani 
mals; and old animals make the 
strongest glue. 

The violet rays of light tend to 
produce green colour, by decompo¬ 
sing carbonick acid. 

Gum Arabick is obtained from a 
species of mimosa, called nilotica, a 
native of Egypt. The gum traga- 
canth is a native of Crete, and more 
adhesive than gum Arabick. 

Gum consists of the same as su¬ 
gar, with two tenths more oxygen 
and less carbon. 

The Chinese are said to have in¬ 
vented gunpowder soon after the 
Christian era, and to have used it in 
cannon. In 1249 an Arabick author 
describes its use in fireworks and 
shells; and it seems to have been 
used in Europe in ordnance at the be¬ 
ginning of the 14th century. The 
Chinese use the same proportions as 
the English government, which is, 
75 of nitre, 

10 of sulphur, 

15 of charcoal. 






CHYMISTRY. 


In France, the proportions are, 

77 of nitre, 

9 of sulphur, 

14 of charcoal. 

The gaseous products of 100 grains 
are 91 cubick inches, and the solid 
products 54 grains. The gases are 
azote 42 inches, carbonick acid 30 
inches, carbureted hydrogen 9, sul- 
phureted hydrogen 4, nitrous gas 6, 
making 91; and the solid contents 
are 40 grains of sub-carbonate of 
potash, 11 of sulphate of potash, 3 of 
charcoal, and | of sulphur. 

The explosive force of gunpowder , 
as compared with the pressure of the 
atmosphere, is estimated at from 
1000 to 2000 atmospheres. A cubick 
inch produces 236 inches of elastick 
fluid, and if rammed into half its 
space, it produces 472 inches of gas. 

Gunpowder does not explode by 
heat at less than 6000 of Fahrenheit. 
Its force of explosion, when closely 
confined, is 6| tons to a square inch. 
When the air is dry it discharges a 
bullet 1700 feet in a. second; and 
when very damp, but 1200 feet. 10 
parts of tin and 100 of copper make 
gun metal or brass guns. 

Hungary water is made by distil¬ 
ling 2 lbs. of rosemary with two 
quarts of spirits of wine. 

Hydrogen and carbonick oxyde 
absorb half their volumes of oxygen. 

Hydruret of phosphorus inflames 
spontaneously, and fixes much oxy¬ 
gen. 

Jade is a species of talc, and used 
by the Hindoos and Chinese for god¬ 
making. 

Indigo is prepared from the leaves 
and small branches of the indigo — 
fera tinctoria —of which there are 
two varieties. It is also prepared in 
England from merium, and isatis or 
woad. It is the blue, or sulphate of 
indigo, of the dyers, and a very im¬ 
portant article. 

The scales on hot iron arise from 
the absorption of oxygen, and are 
called black oxyde. 

Carbonate of iron is the rust of iron. 

100 grains of iron burnt in oxygen 
gas increase to 130, with great heat 
and flame, proving the compound 
nature of the metal. 

Isinglass is made of the sounds of 


141 

sturgeons, a fish which sometimes is 
18 feet long and 700 lbs. weight. 

White lead is made by exposing 
sheets of the metal to fumes of vine¬ 
gar. Arbor saturni is made by sus¬ 
pending a piece of zinc in acetate of 
lead. Solder is two of lead and one 
of tin. All preparations of lead are 
deleterious. When wine is sweet¬ 
ened with litharge, it may be de¬ 
tected by sulphureted hydrogen, in 
a black precipitate. Ores of lead in 
veins occur in siliceous rocks, and 
sometimes in calcareous. 

The best candles for light are those 
made from vegetable tallow and wax, 
or cocoa-nut; and the whitest light 
is produced from the last or from 
vegetable oils, duly purified, as in 
Franee. 

Light .arises from the heat of the 
carbon, &c. in connexion with the 
combining gases, for these alone give 
little light; but by their condensa¬ 
tion afford the intense motion which 
disperses the carbon as light. 

The flashes of torches used on the 
stage are made by the fine dust, or 
seeds of lycopodium , or club moss. 

Light matches are made of phos- 
phoret of sulphur. 

Liquor of Jtints, or silicated alkali, 
is two or three parts of potash with 
one of silica. 

Litmus is made from the archil li¬ 
chen. Acids turn its purple to red, 
and alkalies the red into blue. 

Crystallized carbonate of lime is 
calcareous spar. 

One grain of sulphate of lime will 
render 2000 grains of soft water hard. 

Fluate of lime is fluor spar. 

Lunar caustick is nitrate of silver. 

4 lbs. of oak bark make 1 lb. of 
leather, but 1 lb. of catechu earth is 
equal to 8 lbs. of oak bark. 

Lamp black is prepared by burning 
resinous substances in close rooms, 
and collecting the smoke on woollen 
cloths, which are brushed ; and to 
expel the oil from this soot, it is heat¬ 
ed to redness in an iron vessel. 

Madder is the root of the rubia 
tinctorum, which grows in Europe. 
It gives a deep red dye, susceptible 
of changes by alkalis, &c. 

Manure owes its stimulating power 






142 


CHYMISTRY. 


to salts of ammonia, or volatile al¬ 
kali. Human soil affords three times 
as much as that of any animal. 

The regulus of metals means the 
pure metals. 

Mercury imbibes one fifth per cent, 
of oxygen, and becomes a black pow¬ 
der, and by further oxydation it be¬ 
comes a red precipitate; it then con¬ 
tains ten per cent, of oxygen. 

Two of copper and one of tin make 
concave mirrors for telescopes. 

Minimum or red lead is a double 
or deutoxyde of lead made from the 
protoxyde or massicot. Specifick 
gravity 8.9, and 90 lead with 8 oxy¬ 
gen. Lead ore generally contains 
silver. 

Mosaick gold is the peroxyde of 
sulphur and tin. 

Musk is a secretion of-certain spe¬ 
cies of deer, and accumulated in a 
bag the size of a small egg and 
hanging from the belly. For this tri¬ 
fle they are in Thibet hunted and 
slaughtered by thousands. Canada 
contains a rat the size of a rabbit 
with the habits of the beaver, which 
secretes a musky fluid near the tail, 
and is a victim to avarice, which 
makes from 25 to 50s. per ounce of 
the article. There are also musk 
seeds the size of a bean. 

Morocco leather is goat’s skin. 

The narcotick principle in the white 
poppy produces opium which is its 
concrete milky juice. 

The nails are coagulated albu¬ 
men and phosphate of lime. 

Naphtha is fluid bitumen ; petro¬ 
leum, viscid; bitumen; and asphal- 
tum is hard bitumen. It is com¬ 
bined with vegetable substance in 
coals. 

The nitrogen in animal substances 
distinguishes them from vegetables. 
In decomposing after death,'vegeta- 
oles display their oxygen by their 
acidity, and animals their nitrogen 
by their alkalinity, by forming am¬ 
monia. 

Nitrick acid is spirit of nitre. 

The breathing of nitrous oxyde 
gas produces exhilaration and a spe¬ 
cies of intoxication. 

Nitrick acid is aquafortis. 
JVi/ro-muriatick acid is aqua-regia. 


Oils are found in eighty or ninety 
plants or trees, as the olive, linseed, 
aloes, rape seed, carstan, and from 
the ricinus communis , &c. Wax is 
produced from the myrica cerifera 
which flourishes in North America. 
It is green, burns with a white flame, 
and the shrubs yield from 5 to 7 lbs. 

Expressed oils are animal and ve¬ 
getable and are called fixed oils ; 
their specifick gravity varies from 
0.9 to 0.97; they boil at 600 de¬ 
grees. Exposed to the air they ab¬ 
sorb oxygen and become solid as 
transparent drying oils, or opaque 
fat oils ; if burnt and rendered viscid 
they make printer’s ink ; with fixed 
alkalis, fat oils. 

Volatile or essential oils are dis¬ 
tilled with water from vegetable sub¬ 
stances, of which they constitute 
the fragrance ; the specifick gravity 
of oil of turpentine is only 0.792, 
while that of sassafras is nearly 1.1. 
They consist chiefly of carbon and 
hydrogen and evaporate rapidly in 
open vessels. 

Rancid oils convert vegetable blues 
into red. 

Olifiunt gas or hydruret of carbon 
absorbs three times its volume of 
oxygen, and forms twice its volume 
of carbonick acid. Water absorbs 
eight times its volume of oxyde of 
chlorine. 

Four grains of opium are equiva¬ 
lent to a tea spoon or 100 drops of 
laudanum. 

Opodeldock is a solution of soap 
in alcohol, with camphor and vo¬ 
latile oil. 

Pakfong is a mixture of 118 zinc, 

5 copper, and 13 nickel. 

Parchment is prepared skin of 
sheep or goats. 

Pearlash —potash or subcarbonate 
of potash, is obtained from the ashes 
of burnt wood or vegetables ; thus, 
1000 lbs. of wormwood ashes pro¬ 
duce 743 lbs. of potash, stalks of 
sun-flower 349, fermitory 360, beech 
219, &c.; the ashes are boiled and 
the lie is evaporated in iron pans. 
American ashes are thought the 
best. 

Pearls consist of concentrick lay¬ 
ers of carbonate of lime and mem¬ 
brane. 

Pearls and mother of pearl are 




CI1YMISTRY. 


143 


procured from the mytilus marga- 

ritiferus, a muscle of tne Indian seas, 
about eight inches long. 

Pewter is tin alloyed with a 20th 
of copper, and generally with pro¬ 
portions of lead, zinc, bismuth, and 
antimony. 

In 17S2, Dr. James Price of Guil¬ 
ford, pretended to have discovered the 
Philosopher’s stone, and published 
an account of his experiments, but 
being a fellow of the Royal Society, 
he was required on pain of exclu¬ 
sion to repeat his experiments be¬ 
fore Messrs. Kirwan and Woulfe, 
but after some equivocation, he took 
poison, and died in August 1783. He 
presented specimens of his gold to 
the King and the Royal Society, 
and pretended that they were made 
by a red and white powder. 

Phosphorick acid is a very abund¬ 
ant substance combined with lime, 
and composes mountains in Spain, 
&c. It also abounds in ores and ani¬ 
mal substances. 

Pinchbeck is 3 zinc and 4 copper. 

Potassium is formed by exposing 
a hydrate of potash to a voltaick 
circle of 500 double plates of four 
inches, when the substance appears 
at the negative pole, oxygen being 
developed at the positive pole. It is 
also made by melting potash with 
iron turnings in a gun barrel. 

One thousand parts of spirits of 
wine have, by mechanical force, 
been pressed into 934, olive oil 952, 
rain water to 954, and mercury to 
997. 

The most powerful known poison is 
prussick acid, called hydrocyanick, 
and formed from iodine, cyanuret, 
and mercury. The acid in a state 
of vapour at a moderate heat fills the 
retort and condenses. A single drop 
put on the tongue of a large dog 
kills it instantly. It appears to 
destroy the nervous system. It red¬ 
dens vegetables, and its constituents 
are two volumes of carbon, one of 
hydrogen, and one of nitrogen ; it 
may also be extracted from bitter 
almonds. Prussick acid is also ob¬ 
tained from green tea, and souchong 
is as effectual in poisoning flies as 
arscnick. 

Prussiate of iron is Prussian blue. 

Sir John Pringle determined the 


power of various salts to arrest 
putrefaction or decomposition as un¬ 
der— 

Sea salt. 1 

Vitriolated and soluble tartar, 

and mindererus. 2 

Sal ammonia and saline mixture 3 
Nitre, hartshorn, and wormwood 4 

Borax. 12 

Salt of amber.. 20 

Alum and myrrh. 30 

Bark.120 

Camphor.300 

But pyrolignecms acid or condensed 
steam of green wood baked in an 
oven is the most powerful anti- 
septick known; and the smoke of 
wood fires and charcoal act on the 
same principle. 

Ratafia is spirits flavoured with 
kernels of different fruit. 

Realger is a red combination of 
80 arsenick and 20 sulphur. Orpi- 
ment is another combination. 

Rennet is the inner coat of the sto¬ 
mach of young animals, generally 
that of the calf. It coagulates milk 
and produces cheese. 

Tartrate of potash and soda is 
called Rochelle salt. 

Saliva contains saline matter and 
albumen, and gastrick juice has the 
same constituents. The chyme in 
the stomach is converted into chyle 
in the small intestines, by mixture 
with bile and pancreatick secretion. 
In some animals it has been ex¬ 
amined, and is a white fluid, with a 
sweetish taste and coagulates. Its 
principal component is albumen, and 
the serous part is like sugar of milk; 
in animals that feed on vegetables 
it is more transparent, and the co- 
agulum is more albuminous. It is 
absorbed by the lacteals, and being 
mixed with lymph is carried into the 
venous system. 

All the metals are formed into 
salts. 

Thus, there is muriate of gold, 
which, with tin, makes the purple 
of Cassius. 

Nitrate of silver, called lunar caus- 
tick. 

Nitrate of copper, which deto¬ 
nates. 

Ace*a'e of copper, celled verdigris. 

Sulohate of zinc, called white vi¬ 
triol 











CHYMISTRY. 


144 

Tartrate ofpotash and antimony, 
called tartar-emetick. 

Muriate of cobalt, which is sympa- 
thetick ink, being without colour 
when cold, but turning green when 
held to the fire. 

Antimony and chlorick gas form 
butter of antimony. 

The quality of saltpetre is in¬ 
versely as the angle of refraction,, 
and 5 deg. is called par. 1 per cent, 
is allowed for every degree above. 

Salt of sorrel, or super-oxylate of 
potash, is what is called salt of 
demons. It dissolves the oxyde of 
iron in the ink. 

Salt of tartar remains dry at the 
top of very high mountains, though 
it liquifies at their base. 

Salt cracks in the fire owing to 
water in it being vapourized. 

All cattle thrive best if supplied 
with salt. Horses will consume 
6 oz. daily, cows 4, and sheep #. 
It is used as a preventive of the 
rot. 

Unknown salts are determined to 
be nitrates by mixing them with 
muriatick acia, when chlorine is 
evolved. 

Muriate of ammonia is sal ammo- 
niack. 

Carbonate of potash is salt of 
wormwood. 

Shagreen is the skin of the hound- 
fish, called the shagree. 

Chamois leather is the skin of the 
chamois goat. 

Shells consist of carbonate of lime 
and animal gluten. 

Soda water is made by combining 
eight times its bulk of carbonick 
acid gas, formed in the process 
from chalk and dilute sulphurick 
acid, to which is added some car¬ 
bonate of soda. 

Muriate of soda is table salt. 

Soap is chiefly made of kelp, or the 
ashes of sea weeds dried and burnt 
in pits. Its refuse is used in making 
glass bottles. 

The best soap is made of olive oil 
in the south of Europe. In England 
it is made of whale oil or tallow, 
and to give it a yellow colour rosin 
is added. Soft soap is made with 


potash, and hard with soda. Soap 

of ammonia is volatile liniment. 

Waters which contain earthy salts 
decompose common Soap, and form 
a new soap, which is insoluble in 
water. 

Spruce beer is made of water, 
treacle, and the essence of spruce. 

Only two Specijicks have been dis¬ 
covered in medicine, bark in agues 
and mercury in syphilis. 

Variety in the constituents of Soil 
is essential to fertility. It is barren 
when nineteen-twentieths are of one 
substance ; hence lime or marl im¬ 
proves sand or clay. 

Water passed over wheat flour 
carries off all the Starch, which falls 
to the bottom, and leaves the tough 
substance called gluten. 

Starch consists of 50 oxygen, 44 
carbon, and 6 hydrogen.- 

Starch becomes sugar by boiling 
for 48 hours in 100 of water and 1 of 
sulphurick acid. 

The liquor of burned Sulphur is 
sulphurick acid, and when combined 
with soda it forms Glauber’s salts; 
with magnesia, Epsom salts; and 
with copper and zinc, vitriol; all sul¬ 
phates when the acid is strongest, 
or sulplmricA:; or sulphites, when 
the adid is sulphurous, or weak. 

Sugar has latterly been clarified 
by boiling it at a low heat in vacuo. 
So the essential oils are purified at a 
low heat, and their odour preserved. 

Sulphate of soda is Glauber’s salt. 

Sulphate of magnesia is Epsom 
salt. 

Sulphate of allumina is alum. 

Sulphate of lime is plaster of Paris. 

Sulphuret of potash is liver of sul 
phur. 

Saltpetre is nitrate of potash. 

Super-acetate of lead is sugar of 
lead, and a solution of it is Goulard’s 
extract. 

Sulphate of iron is green copperas. 

Sulphate of copper is blue cop¬ 
peras. 

Sulphate of copper is blue vitriol. 

Sulphate of bary;es is ponderous 
spar. 

Tannin , the principle of the sub- 




OPTICKS. 145 


Stance used in the tanning of leather, 
is made from nut-galls, which are 
likewise a constituent of writing 
ink:*—3 parts of nut-galls, 1 of log¬ 
wood, and 1 of green vitriol, boiled in 
water, making the best ink. 

Tannin is found in nut-galls, bark, 
catechu, kino, sumach, and old fus- 
tick. 

A test of genuine Tea is a grain 
and a half of sulphate of iron; genu¬ 
ine green tea has a bluish tint; bo- 
hea, a blackish blue. If adulterated, 
it is all colours. 

Tin plates are made by cleaning 
iron plates with acid, and then dip¬ 
ping them in melted tin. 

Tin, united with mercury, is the 
silvering of-looking-glasses. 

Tin and antimony are pewter. 

Acetous acid is distilled Vinegar. 

Sulphurick acid is spirit of Vitriol. 

Sulphate of copper is blue Vitriol. 

The chymistry of Vegetation con¬ 
sists in the decomposition of the 
aqueous solution of tl»e soils, and re¬ 
combination of the elementary con¬ 
stituents in the membranes, fibres, 
and cellular and vascular tissues in 
the bark, wood, pith, and marrow. 
The fine membranes forms mucilage, 
and in cells, chiefly hexagonal, per¬ 
vades the whole plant. The chymi- 
cal decompositions in plants are be¬ 
lieved to be effected in the leaves, in 
which the sap is exposed to the 
action of the air. 

Vegetables are composed of carbon, 
oxygen, and some hydrogen, with 
nitrogen ; and they mainly produce 
gluten, farina, mucilage, oil, and 
sugar. 

Among Vegetable secretion the 
milk of tne cow tree is remarkable. 
It grows in barren situations in 
South America, but on boring exudes 
a copious supply of rich nourishing 
milk. 

The cbymical power of plants are 
proved by fuci, which thrive without 
roots; and the epidemdrimi grows, 
flourishes, and blossoms, when sus¬ 
pended in a room, merely by decom¬ 
posing the air and vapour. 

The maximum density of Water 
is at 424 deg. and it expands as cool¬ 
ed to 32 deg., the freezing point; and 

M 


in freezing further expands, so that 
a cubick inch of it has displayed a 
force of above 27000 lbs. 

If Water is saturated with a third 
of its weight of salt, it. will still dis¬ 
solve sugar ; and water saturated 
with caibonick acid will dissolve 
iron. 

The difference between Thames 
and distilled water is as 1.0006 to 1. 
Rain water is equivalent to distilled 
water. 

Water may be saturated with oxy¬ 
gen by the peroxide of barium. 
When, at the specifick gravity of 1.- 
45 it acts as a caustick on the skin. 

Zinc and copper make brass, pinch¬ 
beck, Dutch gold, &c. 


OPTICKS. 

The ancients were familiar with 
the elementary principles of opticks, 
and Euclid and Ptolemy developed 
them in formal treatises. They ap¬ 
pear also to have been acquainted 
with the use of convex and concave 
glasses; but the former do not ap¬ 
pear to have been applied to specta¬ 
cles till the 13th century. Roger Ba¬ 
con about 1250 described telescopes 
and microscopes exactly, and yet 
neither were made till the beginning 
of the 17th century, when one Me- 
tius, at Alkmaer, and Jansen, of 
Middleburgh, made them about the 
same time. Another Dutchman of 
the name of Drevel soon after made 
microscopes. Galileo imitated their 
invention by its description, and 
made three in succession, one which 
magnified a thousand times; and 
having with these ‘discovered Ju¬ 
piter’s moons and the phases of Ve¬ 
nus, telescopes soon became very 
popular, and were improved by Zuc- 
chi, Huygens, Gregory, and New¬ 
ton; and finally by Martin, Hall, 
Doliand, and Herschel. The famous 
microscope of Lewenhoeck consisted 
merely of small glass drops or 
spheres. Prisms were first used in 
Italy, and their powers developed by 
Grimaldi. The theory of the rain¬ 
bow was explained by Descartes; 
and the solar microscope was invent¬ 
ed by Dr. Hooke. 

The Galilean telescope has a con¬ 
cave eye glass, and is clear and 
shoiter than those of Kepler, with 






146 


0PT1CKS. 


Huygens’three convex eye-glasses to 
set the figure upright. The Gregorian 
reflectorlias a small concave specu¬ 
lum for the image, and a large one 
facing for the object, with an aper¬ 
ture in the middle. The Cassigrain 
has a small convex speculum instead 
of the small concave. In Newton’s 
plan, the small speculum was plane 
at 45 deg. and the eye piece in the 
side, but Gregory’s and the Cassi¬ 
grain are preferred. Herschel’s 40 
foot is in Newton’s form, with a tube 
of sheet iron. The eye-glasses with 
which it magnifies 6400 times, are 
one-fiftieth of an inch focus. His dis¬ 
coveries were, however, made with 
five feet achromaticks, and his great 
telescope was a toy: the mirror 
would not keep its figure. Dr. Brew¬ 
ster has suggested a great improve¬ 
ment by receiving the image through 
an achromatick prism, and so re¬ 
fracting it to the eye-piece, while it 
greatly increases the light. 

In Achromatick telescopes, the 
colours of refraction through any 
single glass are corrected by com¬ 
bining glass lenses of different dis¬ 
persive powers, as crown glass and 
flint glass. They were first made 
by More Hall about 1723, and were 
sold by Dolland in 1757. The object- 
glass is composed of two convex len¬ 
ses of crown glass, and one concave 
of flint glass; or sometimes of one 
of each. The curvature, to be mul¬ 
tiplied by the focal length of the 
whole, should be as follows:— 

1st lens,convex crown 0.6087- -0.8696 
2d lens, concave flint 0.4544- -0.6087 
3d lens, convex crown 0.6087 • • 0.6087 

With two glasses— 

1st lens, convex crown 0.293 -0.353 
2d lends, concave flint 0.345-• 1.148 
or for 30 inches, 8 inches and 14.3 
for the first; and 12.11 and 28.5 for 
the second lens, taking the speci- 
fick gravity of the flint glass at 3.354, 
and the ratio of refraction in the 
two, as 1 to 1.656. In eye-glasses, 
the concave should be crown and the 
convex flint; the first 0.64, the se¬ 
cond 0.529 ; and the third 0.64 mul¬ 
tiplied by the focal length : and in 
double eye-glasses, 0.32 and 0.529. 

Only 45 of 100 rays reach the eye 
pure after two reflections by a tele¬ 
scope, and these by the eye-glass are 
reduced as 100 to 95, or to 42. 

The spccuiums of reflecting tele¬ 


scopes are 32 copper, 15 grain tin, 
1 arsenick, 1 brass and I silver. 

The magnifying power of a tele¬ 
scope is the quotient of the focal 
length of the object-glass by the eye¬ 
glass, or one of the eye-glasses. 

In Herschel’s 40 foot reflector, the 
great speculum was 48 inches diame¬ 
ter, 3£ inches thick, and 2118 lbs. 
and it magnified 6400 times. 

In 1821, a 25 feet reflector, on the 
direct principle, was set up at Green¬ 
wich, by Ram age, of Aberdeen. 

The relative aberration of glasses 
from a spherical figure is in a piano 
convex 4J times its thickness. A 
convex lens whose sides are 1 and 
6. is 1.08 its thickness. An equal 
double lens is 1.57 its thickness. 

The best form of a lens is a dou¬ 
ble convex, whose radii are 1 and 6. 
The 1 being towards parallel rays the 
aberration is but 1.07, but the 6 to¬ 
wards them makes it 3.45. 

Spherical aberration is avoided by 
a lens, part of an ellipsoid, whose 
greater axis i* the index of refrac¬ 
tion, and the distance of the foci 1. 
The seeond surface being concave, 
whose centre is the other focus of the 
same spheriod. Also, if one sur¬ 
face is plane and the other part of 
a hyperboloid, whose greater axis 
is the index of refraction, and the 
distance of the foci 1. - 

The surface of a true concave mir¬ 
ror is a paraboloid. In reflecting 
telescopes the mirror is an ellipsoid. 

The microscope enables us to de¬ 
tect animalcula? the 10000 of an inch 
long; and if half as broad and thick, 
a cubick inch would contain 10000 X 
20000 X 20000 = 4 millions of mil¬ 
lions, yet moving and perfect. 

The highest lenses, of Lewerr- 
hoeck’s microscopes were but the 
20th of an inch. They magnified 
the diameter 100 times, and (he sur¬ 
face 10000 times. The 59th of an 
inch magnifies the same 500 and 
250000. An inch focus magnifies 
but 5 and 25, and a half inch 10 and 
100 . 

The microscope detects globules 
with important functions in the 
blood, the chyme, the chyle the 
lymph, the milk, the pus, &c. It 
also displays globules equally active 
in vegetable organs. Animation ap- 




OPTICKS. 147 


pears to begin with a globule, called 
the monas termo, a transparent point 
visible with the microscope, and 
found among infurioso. 

Newton, in 1671, measured seven 
colours in the prismatick spectrum, 
18J feet from the prism, and 10$ 
inches long and 2\ wide. He deter¬ 
mined the red to be 45, the orange 
27, the yellow 40, the green 60, the 
blue 60, the indigo 40, and violet 80, 
parts of 352 : the hole admitting the 
light being one-third of an inch in 
diameter. The light consisted of an 
infinite number of circles or shades, 
but those tints were so discriminated 
by him. Grimaldi had previously 
described the same colours and had 
discovered that the hole generates 
the same colours by passing near 
any bodies creating fringes within, 
ana without a shadow. 

In Newton’s prism the sine of in¬ 
cidence being 50, the sines of the ex¬ 
treme rays were 77 and 78. 

It has since appeared that the 
colours depend on the size of the 
hole; thus Drs. Young, Brewster, 
and others, find that a hole the 20th 
of an inch gives but four colours, red 
16 parts, light green 23, blue 36, and 
violet 25 of 100 parts, with a stripe of 
yellow equal only to 1. Hence 
Newton’s measure is incorrect. The 
dispersion is one degree. 

The dispersive power and the pro¬ 
portion depends also on the sub¬ 
stance of which the prism is made. 
In a prism of flint glass it is 0.48; of 
crown .033; but chromate of lead is 
A ; oil of cassia .139 ; fluor spar and 
crysolite but .322; water .335 ; and 
sulphurick acid .031. As to propor¬ 
tions, the mean ray in crown glass 
divides the green and the blue. In 
flint glass the boundary is much 
nearer the red; but in rock crystal 
it is much nearer the violet; and in 
oil of cassia nearer than in flint 
glass. 

The red is least turned aside and 
the violet most, and these are called 
least and most refrangible. The 
illuminating power is greater be¬ 
tween the yellow and the green. 
The violet approaches to blackness. 
—Light appears to be a constant 
consequence of combustion, or of the 
union of oxygen with excited hydro¬ 
gen, under a vast variety of com¬ 


binations with carbon and other 
matter. 

White light is a compound of ma¬ 
ny degrees of excitement when pass¬ 
ed through a prism, and thereby 
subjected to oblique refraction or re¬ 
action. These various excitements 
are separated into an oblong figure, 
the lower or straigh test end of which 
is red, with shades to orange; then 
with shades to yellow; then with 
shades to green; then with shades 
to blue; then to indigo ; and then to 
violet and negation. 

In the prismatick spectrum, violet 
rays indicate heat , as l, green as », 
yellow as 8, and red as 16; beyond 
the red, no peculiar action exists. 
Some philosophers ascribe the co¬ 
lours to this difference of intensity ; 
and hence painters call blue cold, 
green soft, yellow rich, and red 
warm. Musicians have similar no¬ 
tions. 

Herschel ascertained that the ex¬ 
treme heat of the spectrum was 1$ 
inch beyond the red end, but others 
say at tne red end. Ritter and Wol¬ 
laston found that the violet end, and 
beyond, blackened muriate of silver, 
and a little beyond, and when black¬ 
ened at that end, it was restored to 
the red end. In violet, phosphorus 
emitted white fumes in the red, but 
was arrested in the violet. Mori- 
chini and Mrs. Somerville have 
magnetized needles in the violet rays. 
Dr. Wollaston added other facts, 
proving the deoxydating power of the 
violet end, and tne oxydating in the 
red. 

The extraordinary experiments of 
Fraunhofer make tne red and other 
rays of the prism, in seconds, from 
Other Dis- 
Red cols, persion 
Crown glass . . . 361.. 1336=1697 

Flint do. 437 . . 1726=2163 

Water. 305 . . 1398=1703 

O. turp., no violet 625 .. 2060=2685 
Alcohol, do. . . . 395. . 1125=1520 
Sulph. ether, do. 380.-1150 = 1530 
He found five colours, but only four 
in the last bodies; but he discovered 
that the entire spectrum was crossed 
by black lines, of which he counted 
590 from the extreme red to the vi¬ 
olet. 

The polarized pencils of Iceland 







148 


OPTICKS. 


spar gave the same colours as other' 
light, and the same black lines. 

The intensity of light was in the 
red 2, in the orange 30, in the yellow 
and green 100, in the blue 32, in the 
indigo 18, and violet 3. 

Very thin plates of transparent 
bodies become coloured, and the 
thinnest black, so as to reflect no 
light; while, according to thickness, 
the various colours are produced. 
When convex lenses are used to pro¬ 
duce these thin plates, by laying 
them on each other coloured rays 
are produced. The colours produced 
by reflection and transmission, taken 
from the centre, are as under, in per- 


pendicular rays. 


1. Black . . . . 

. White 

2. Blue. 


3. White . . . 

. Black 

4. Yellow . . . 

. Violet 

5. Red. 

. Blue 

6. Violet.... 

. White 

7. Blue. 


8. Green.... 

. Red 


and so through seven series. 


The thickness of one was the mil¬ 
lionth of an inch, and in water f ths ; 
and of 2, 2|., and in water 1^; and 
for No. 7, 15| millionth, and 11^. 
They appear to be explained by the 
determinations of Dr. Young andM. 
Fraunhofer, and to arise from the 
extent of waves. Newton, in his 
characteristick way, ascribed them 
to fits of easy reflection and trans¬ 
mission ! 

As minute'bodies make coloured 
rings, which increase inversely as 
the bodies, Dr. Young contrived an 
Eriometer to measure such bodies 
and small fibres. He thus deter¬ 
mined that the seed of lycopodium is 
the 10500 of an inch, or 3.5 on his 
scale, every part of which is the 
3000th of an inch. The atoms of 
milk were 3, or the 9000th of an 
inch ; of human blood 7; of fibres of 
silk 12; of cotton 19; of Saxony 
wool 22; of South Down 25 to 39, 
coarse wool 60. 

The colours of bodies depend on 
the size of their atoms and the chy- 
mical character of the local atmo¬ 
spheres of their atoms and intersti¬ 
ces. Black has small atoms and 
absorbs light—white, large, and re¬ 
flects it. Reds are of oxygen cha¬ 


racter according to Ellis, greens ni¬ 

trogen, and violets hydrogen. Their 
minute parts decompose incident 
light, and absorb some and reflect 
others ; an oxygen body combining 
with hydrogen, and reflecting red, 
and the contrary with others; thus 
a hydrogen atmosphere absorbs red, 
&c. and reflects blue, indigo, &c. 
and a nitrogen absorbs red and vi¬ 
olet, and reflects green or white, 
orange or blue. 

The colours of bodies are produced 
on the same principle as the colours 
of their plates, and are owing to the 
thickness or thinness of the atoms, 
so that the sizes of the atoms may 
be inferred from their colours on 
Newton’s data. To greens he as¬ 
signs atoms the 15 millionth of an 
inch. To scarlets the 19 millionth. 
To oranges the 17 millionth. To 
yellow the 16 millionth. Vegetable 
greens the 25 millionth. Blues and 
purples the 14 and 12 millionth. Sky 
blue the 2g- millionth. Pure white, 
as silver, the 5 millionth. Other 
whites are from 15 to the 25 mil¬ 
lionth. Black varies from § to 2 
millionths of an inch. This theory 
of Newtons’ seems to stand. 

Late experiments of Mr. Ellis 
prove that the green colour of plants 
arises from their nitrogen character, 
that red colours arise from oxygen, 
and indigo and violet from hydro¬ 
gen. 

Solar light blackens muriate of 
silver, but in the spectrum the violet, 
purple, and blue rays effect it in 15 
seconds, and the red only in 20 
minutes, and the effect is more rapid 
beyond the violet end. Gum-guia- 
cum is said to show contrary effects. 

Buffon combined plane glass mir¬ 
rors only 6 inches by 8, ana with 40, 
set on fire a tarred beech plank 66 
feet distant. With 98 at 126 feet; 
with 112 at 138feet; with 154 at 150 
feet; with 168 at 200 feet; and he 
melted all the metals at 30 or 40 
feet. 

Concave burning mirrors have 
been made of great size and power. 
They concentrate the sun’s image 
at half the focal length. One of 4 
feet diameter made of copper and tin, 
melted iron ore in 24 seconds, a six¬ 
pence in 7| seconds, a halfpenny in 
20 seconds, tin in 3 seconds, cast 














OPTICKS. 


149 


iron in 16 seconds, and slate in 3 se¬ 
conds. Water boils immediately and 
evaporates, wood flames in a mo¬ 
ment, pumice stone becomes glass, 
earth yellow or green glass. 

The full moon produces no heat. 

Concave wood or pasteboard, gilt 
and polished makes as good a focus 
as metal. 

Parker made a glass lens 3 feet in 
diameter with 6 feet 8 inches focus 
and 3£ inches thick at the centre. 
It fuses slate in 2 seconds, pure gold, 
platina, nickel, and cast iron in 3 se¬ 
conds, pure silver in 4 seconds, peb¬ 
ble, barytes, and lava, in 7 seconds, 
steel and bar iron in 12 seconds, 
limestone in 55 seconds, volcanick 
clay, Cornish moor stone, and rhom¬ 
boid al spar in a minute. 

Gold retained its metallick state 
though exposed for hours. Wedg¬ 
wood's pyrometrical clay ran into 
white enamel in a few seconds. The 
lunar rays gave no heat. 

The rays were concentrated about 
4000 times if the focus was the 
quarter of an inch in diameter. 

One of the most curious specula¬ 
tions in natural philosophy is that 
of concentrating or multiplying the 
heat of the sun by plain mirrors, con¬ 
cave mirrors, or convex lenses. As 
one plain mirror reflects the heat of 
the sun, so the reflection of two, 
three or more augments the heat. In 
this way Archimedes burnt the Ro¬ 
man fleet at Syracuse; and An- 
theonius, an architect at Constanti¬ 
nople describes the method, and so 
does Leonard Digges, who wrote on 
it in the reign of Elizabeth and as¬ 
serts that he fired bodies half a mile 
distant. 

A plain mirror of half the length 
shows the whole body. 

The crystalline lens in the human 
eye is composed of thin laminae. At 
25 the edges begin to be yellow, and 
at 80 the whole is like amber. 

The op tick nerve enters the eye .11 
of an inch from the axis of the eye 
on the nasal side. The axis is .91. 
The pupil varies with light from .13 
to .27. Focus of the cornea and 
crystalline .69. Angle of vision taken 
in by the fixed eye 110 degrees. 
Diameter of a female crystalline 
taken by Dr. Brewster .378, thick- 
. M2 


ness .172, refractive power 1.384. 
Refractive vitreous humourl .34, and 
aqueous 1.336. 

The smallest visual angle is half a 
minute, and its size on the retina the 
8000th of an inch. 

Light is 8 minutes 8 seconds in its 
transmission through the distance 
from the sun to the earth, and in 
this time the earth in its orbit moves 
20 minutes of a degree, creating an 
aberration from its true place. 

Light is an effect of various ex¬ 
citements besides combustion. Fric¬ 
tion produces it, and phosphori pro¬ 
duce it, snow, diamond, the Bolog¬ 
na stone appear to absorb and radi¬ 
ate it; some combinations evolve it, 
and some plants give flashes. Rub¬ 
bing the eyes in the dark, and their 
inflammation produce flashes of 
light. Slacking lime produces light 
and great heat. 

Fraunhofer has determined the 
breadth of waves of light to be as 
under, in parts of an inch,— 

Red. .00002582 

Orange .. .00002319 

Green. .00002073 

Blue. .00001912 

Indigo. .00001692 

Violet..._. .00001572 

The intermediate spaces are black, 
or when the waves mingle they are 
light. In various colours, therefore, 
no microscope can exhibit an ob¬ 
ject less than half those measures. 

Dr. Young maintains that light is 
the affection of a continuous medium 
so rare and elastick as to permit 
bodies to move through it without 
resistance. 

Roemer proved the velocity of 
light to be 200000 miles per second 
by the accelerations and retarda¬ 
tions of the eclipses of Jupiter’s 
moons as nearer or more remote in 
Jupiter’s orbit. 

Light in passing through bodies 
does not increase their temperature 
and adds only to temperature in 
opaque bodies, or in proportion to 
opacity. 

If the quantity of light when the 
sun is vertical be taken at 750, at 75 
degrees it will be 742; at 60 degrees 
718; at 45 degrees 666 ; at 25 degrees 
507; and at 10 degrees 200. 

The theory of the rainbow was 










150 


OPTICKS. 


accurately developed by Kepler and 
Descartes diagrams, just such as 
now appear in books. Father Gri¬ 
maldi had ascertained the powers of 
the prism, and published a book rela¬ 
tive to its peculiar phenomena ; and 
Newton, in repeating these experi¬ 
ments, made several valuable in¬ 
ferences, and pursued the subject so 
as to confer on opticks the character 
of a science. 

The inner rainbow has an angle of 
41 degrees from the centre of the 
solar axis, and is 1 degree 46 minutes 
from violet to red ; the outer bow is 
52 degrees, and 3 degrees 12 minutes 
wide from red to violet. Or, the outer 
rainbow is 52 degrees to 55 degrees, 
and the inner 40 degrees to 42.5 de¬ 
grees, the colours in the two being 
reversed. 

The horizontal moon and sun sur¬ 
prise by their apparent magnitude, 
but all magnitudes are increased in 
the horizon; the first 5 degrees are ap¬ 
parently to the eye equal to 10 or 15 
at 50 or 60 degrees of elevation, and 
the first 15 degrees fill a space to the 
eye equal to a third of the quadrant. 
This is evidently owing to the habit 
of sight, for with an accurate instru¬ 
ment, the measure of 5 degrees near 
the horizon is equal to 5 degrees in 
the zenith, and if the angle of the 
sun or moon be taken, either with a 
tube or a micrometer, when they ap¬ 
pear to the eye so large in the hori¬ 
zon, the measure is identical when 
they are in the meridian, and appear 
to the eye and mind to be but half 
the size. There are two causes for 
this mistake, one, that we infer dis¬ 
tance from intervening objects, and 
,also size from brightness; and the 
angle being the same and the bright¬ 
ness less, the mind treats it as an ob¬ 
ject farther off, but of a given size, 
and therefore sees it larger. 

Transformation of visual colours : 

A square of red, long viewed, pr6- 
duces a light green border, and after¬ 
wards a square of light green,— 

White produces black, and black 
white. 

Red, blue.purple, green 

Blue, yellow* • •• green, red 

A wheel painted in prismatick pro¬ 
portion requires 80 degrees violet, 40 
degrees indigo, 60 degrees blue, 60 
degrees green, 43 degrees yellow, 27 


degrees orange, 45 degrees red ; and 
if any colour is taken out and the 
wheel turned, the remaining colour 
is a transformed colour as above. It 
is ascribed to the subsequent sensi¬ 
bility of the nerves first affected, by 
which they, as it were, take no cog¬ 
nizance of the same colour when 
mixed with others. It is altogether 
a curious subject and ably discussed 
in Brewster’s Cyclopedia. In gen¬ 
eral, the new colour is removed naif 
way in the spectrum, as though 
there were two spectra one begm- 
ning'at the middle of the other. 

Refraction appears to be a variety 
of reflection, and a continuity of re¬ 
flection, from atoms to atoms in a 
medium called transparent. The 
light illumines the whole mass, but a 
principal ray prevails, and the law of 
the reflections is called the law of its 
refraction. 

The sine of the angle of incidence 
being one, the sines of the angles of 
refraction are in constant ratios, as 
under, in the following bodies:— 


Chromate of lead. 2.974 

Diamond. 2.755 

Melted Sulphur . 2.148 

Glass, three lead, one flint • • • 2.028 
Glass, two lead, one sand** •• 1.987 
Glass, two lead, one flint •• •• 1.830 

Glass, one lead, one flint. 1.787 

Glass, three lead, four flint •• • 1.732 

Glass, one lead, two flint. 1.724 

Oil of Cassia. 1.641 

Common flint glass. 1.605 

Quartz, ordinary ray. 1.548 

Quartz, extraordinary ray • •• 1.558 

Plate glass. 1.542 

Crown glass . 1.534 

Crown glass (common). 1.525 

Oil of turpentine. 1.476 

Olive oil. 1.470 

Sulphurick acid.1.440 

Alcohol.1.374 

Ether.1.358 

Salt water.1.343 

Crystalline humour,.1.384 

Water.*1.336 

Ice.1.310 

Tabasheer.1.111 

Air. 1.000276 

Vacuum.equal. 

The refraction of gases, air being 
1, is per Dulong, oxygen .924 ; hy¬ 
drogen .47 ; nitrogen 1.02 ; carbonick 
acid 1.526; olefiant 2.302; chlorine 
2.628. 


Hydrogen or inflammable sub 






























OPTICICS. 


151 


stances of equal density refract from 

two to seven times more than others. 


Taking the atmospherick refrac¬ 
tion at unity, then the refraction of 


Oxygen • • < 

Hydrogen- 
Do. .Berzelius 


Arago | 


•0.8616 

•6.61436 

•7.0335 


According to Brewster, the index 
of refraction is the tangent of its an¬ 
gle of polarization. 

Of 1000 rays of incident light on 
water at an angle of 80 degrees, 333 
are reflected and the remainder re¬ 
fracted ; at 60 degrees 65 reflected; 
at 40 degrees 22; and from 30 to 0 
degrees 18. In mercury the reflec¬ 
tion is 704 to 40 degrees, and even 
666 at 0 degrees, double water at 80 
degrees. Plate glass at 80 degrees 
reflects 412, at 60 degrees 112; at 40 
degrees 34 ; and from 30 to 0, 27 to 
25. At 75 degrees Lambert made 
the refracted and reflected light equal. 
White paper reflects half at 45 de¬ 
grees, and water but 28 of 1000, and 
glass but 42. In glass mirrors 535 
are reflected, and 465 absorbed or 
dispersed. In Herschel’s mirrors 
two-thirds were reflected at 90 de¬ 
grees. 

Bodies which refract most, reflect 
most, or are more splendid. The lo¬ 
cal atmosphere which increases one 
increases the other. 


Air at less than half a millionth of 
an inch thick, ceases to reflect light; 
water at three-eighths and glass at 
one-third. At 72 millionths air re¬ 
flects white, water at 58 millionths, 
and glass at 50 millionths, according 
to Newton. 

The double refraction, or double 
picture of an object, which is pre¬ 
sented through calcareous spar, is 
ascribed by Huygens to light pass¬ 
ing through those bodies in a sphe¬ 
roidal form instead of circular, as in 
other solid transparent bodies. His 
various discoveries in op ticks were 
made about the year 1650; and he 
teaches, that light consists of undu¬ 
lations produced by luminous bodies 
on the fluid which fills all space. 
The same was the opinion of Euler 
anti many others. Descartes as¬ 
cribed it to a protrusion from atom 
to atom in the same universal fluid. 
Newton taught, that they were in¬ 
numerable particles flowing and tra¬ 


velling from the luminous body with 
a velocity of a million of miles in 
five seconds! 

Polarized light is never derived 
from the light of combustion, or any 
artificial flame; only bv reflection, 
by transmission through plates, or 
through crystals, which produce dou¬ 
ble refraction. 

The test of polarized light is, that 
it refuses to be reflected by the sur¬ 
face of a transparent body when it 
is incident at an angle of 56 degrees, 
and in two positions which are at 
right angles to each other, discovered 
by turning the surface round the ray. 
The angle of incidence for water is 
52 degrees, 45 minutes. 

All the light is reflected which falls 
on water at an angle of 48 degrees, 
28 minutes; and at the angle of 53 
degrees it is polarized. In common 
crown glass it is all reflected at 41 
degrees 49 minutes; and polarized 
when reflected at 56 degrees, 45 mi¬ 
nutes. Diamond, 68 degrees; air, 
46 degrees; and rock crystal, 57 de¬ 
grees 22 minutes. 

It is rationally doubted whether 
the qualities assigned to light by 
some experimentahstsof polarization, 
&c. &c. exist in the light, for all the 
circumstances may be as clearly ex¬ 
plained by considering light as mere 
power, subject to simple reaction, 
and then varied reactions of different 
bodies, atmospheres and forms, are 
considered as producing the several 
effects. 

Fraunhofer in his optical experi¬ 
ments, made a machine in which he 
could draw 32,900 lines in an inch 
breadth. 

There are 7700 veins in an inch of 
coloured mother of pearl. Iris orna¬ 
ments of all colours are made by 
lines on steel from 2000 to the 
10000th part of an inch. 

Impressions on the eye are perma¬ 
nently continuous which are re¬ 
peated seven times in a second, and 
on this is founded the rotatory toy 
called the Thaumatrope. 

Looming high, mirage, fata mor¬ 
gana, &c. arise from tne air at dif¬ 
ferent heights being of unequal re¬ 
fraction, by which, rays from dis¬ 
tant objects are bent downwards to 
the eye of the spectator, so that ob- 








152 ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, MAGNETISM. 


jects below the visual horizon, or 17 
miles at sea, are seen above it. A 
hot poker will display the same ef¬ 
fect ; or by looking at objects through 
liquids of different refractive powers 
in a glass vessel. 

A difference of temperature of 3.6° 
in two places, creates irregular re¬ 
fractions between them. 

Water obstructs one-half the per¬ 
pendicular rays of the sun in 17 feet, 
and one-fourth in 34 feet; and only 
a 100-thousandth part reaches the 
depth of 300 feet; hence the bottom 
of deep waters is in total darkness. 

When the sea is a blue colour, it 
is deep water; and when green, 
shallow. 

A ball of lime ignited affords a very 
strong light, equal in the focus of a 
mirror to numerous argand lamps. 

Reflection is in intensity, as the 
difference of refractive power in the 
media. 

The smallest parts of bodies are 
transparent, and opacity is caused 
bymultitudinous reflections owing to 
atomick spaces or interstices, vacant 
or filled with water or gas. 

The smallest atoms are black or 
too small to reflect light, and this is 
the case when they are less than the 
8-millionth part of an inch. 

Bodies are transparent, says New¬ 
ton, when the pores are so small as 
to prevent reflection. 

The luminous appearance of the 
sea is ascribed to microscopick mol- 
lusca and the parts of dead ones, 
which adhere to bodies immersed. 
On a starlight night it appears like 
varied reflections of the stars from 
inclined surfaces. 

Halos are occasioned by crystals 
of ice in the atmosphere, or small 
hail drops partly melted. 

Halos are about 23| degrees in di¬ 
ameter, or exactly double. 

The film of a soap bubble about to 
burst is only about three-fourths of 
the millionth of an inch in thick¬ 
ness. 

The photometer determines the 
quantity of sunshine at noon to be 
from 90° to 100° at midsummer, and 
in midwinter 25° to 28°. A northern 
light at noon, in summer is from 30° 


to 40° ; and in winter from 10° to 15°. 
In gloomy summer weather it is 
from 10° to 15°, and in winter 
only 1°. 

One of the most interesting exhi¬ 
bitions in London, is Carpenter’s 
room of powerful microscopes, and a 
solar microscope, in Lower Regent 
Street. 


ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, 
MAGNETISM. 

All electrical action is without the 
surface of what is called the con¬ 
ductor, or in the space between two 
opposed conductors; and a con¬ 
ductor is as powerful if made of gilt 
tissue paper as of solid gold. The 
conductor is, in fact, a mere boun¬ 
dary surface, the electrick action be¬ 
ing in the space between two sur¬ 
faces. The sparks are the mere 
effect of the distance of the interme¬ 
diate space, being a minimum at 
the place where the spark is taken. 
The light of the spark arises from 
the recombination of the elements 
which have been separated. A brush 
always attends the discharge of posi¬ 
tive electricity towards negative, and 
a star the contrary. 

The bodies which conduct electri¬ 
city, by becoming imbued with it, 
according to the old theory, or by 
resisting its action like water in metal 
pipes, according to the new theory, 
are as under :— 

Metals, 

Dry charcoal, 

Mineral acids, 

Dilute acids, 

Metallick ores, 

Fluids and water, 

Ice to 13° below zero, 
Vegetables and animals, 
Smoke and steam, 

Rarefied air, 

Salts, 

Vapours, 

Natural earth and stones, 
Powdered glass. 

The bodies that are non-con¬ 
ductors, which on one theory receive 
no electricity, and on the other dis¬ 
play its entire action, are oxydes and 
ashes, ice lower than 13° below 
Zero, hard silicious bodies, porcelain 
and baked wood, air and gases, dry 
skins and paper, cotton, feathers. 






153 


ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, MAGNETISM. 


hair, wool, silk, gems, and vitrifica¬ 
tions, glass, fat and wax, sulphur 
and resins, amber and gum-lac. 
Both seiies are arranged in the de¬ 
gree of their conducting and elec- 
trick power, for all are so in various 
degrees. 

Gum-lac is the most perfect non¬ 
conductor, and an excellent coating. 

Davy determined that substances 
which act distinctly upon each other 
electrically, are also such as act chy- 
mically. Of two metals, that which 
has the greatest chymical affinity for 
oxygen, acquires positive electricity, 
and the other negative; thus, zinc 
becomes positive with reference to 
iron, tin, lead, copper, silver, gold, 
platina, in the order in which they 
oxydate, and so with each as to the 
other. In contacts of acids with 
bases, the acids are negative, and 
the bases positive. 

The scale of conductors ends with 
earths and stones, and of non-con¬ 
ductors begins with dry metallick 
oxydes and oils. A thread of gum- 
lac is the most perfect insulation, 1£ 
inch being equal to 15 inches of dry 
silk thread. 

No electrical excitement can be 
acquired by a body in the air, unless 
another body at a distance in the 
same air is in an opposite state; and 
the excitement depends on the sur¬ 
faces, not on the substances of the 
bodies, being as powerful between 
silver paper, covered with gold leaf, 
as solid gold. These facts are fatal 
to all the theories about a fluid or 
fluids, especially as it appears by de¬ 
licate experiments of Coulomb and 
Biot, that the excitement, whether 
positive or negative, is entirely on 
the surface. 

Otto Guericke first observed the 
spark and light of electricity. Dr. 
Wall first noticed the resemblance of 
electricity to thunder and lightning. 

The Leyden phial in electricity 
was discovered by Von Kleist, of 
that city, about 1744. 

The best conductors for electrical 
machines are flat, and opposed above 
and below by others of equal size. 
The best conductors to preserve 
buildings are leaden gutters, with 
lead or copper ridges connected. 

Experiments both in electricity 
and galvanism prove that what is 


called the positive wire or end, or 
positive electricity, acts like an acid 
on blue vegetable infusions, by con¬ 
verting them into red; and also what 
is called the negative end, has the 
effect of an alkali, and converts the 
blue infusion into green. In like 
manner, if the positive and negative 
wires are made to act in acetate of 
lead, the acid is neutralized by the 
positive end, while the metal is sur¬ 
rounded by the metallick particles. 
This is considered as a proof that 
what is called positive electricity is 
anti-alkaline in its character; and 
what is called negative electricity is 
anti-acidulous. 

A simple galvanick circle consists 
of a plate of zinc and a plate of cop¬ 
per, with an acid solution between 
them. A power similar to positive 
electricity moving from the copper 
to the zinc. A compound circle is 
when the same combination is re¬ 
peated any number of times. By the 
process the zinc is oxydated, and ne¬ 
gative electricity is continually cir¬ 
culating from the zinc to the copper. 
The zinc end being called the posi¬ 
tive, and the copper or silver end the 
negative pole; the effect really being 
from the copper to the zinc, because 
the two extra plates at the end of a 
compound circle are superfluous. 

Though galvanick and electrical 
phenomena arise from the same 
cause, the separation of the acidulous 
and inflammable principles, yet fifty 
pair of plates scarcely affect the gold 
leaf electrometer, and pith balls will 
not diverge with much fewer than 
1000, and then exhibit very slight 
actions and re-actions, commonly 
called attractions and repulsions. 

The light of the stream which 
passes from the poles of the wires 
when pointed with charcoal, is in 
vacuo of a dazzling purple colour, in 
air various, and the heat is so intense 
that it melts platina, fuses quartz, 
lime, &c., and converts other refrac¬ 
tory substances into vapour. If the 
battery consist of 100 pair of plates, 
about six inches square, the light is 
occasioned by the simple union of 
the two elements, because it takes 
place in non-combustible gases. All 
the parts of the apparatus partake of 
the increase of tne heat, that at the 
poles being no more than the final 
development. Gold leaf burns with 





154 ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, MAGNETISM. 


a blueish white light; silver, green; 
copper and tin like gold; lead, pur¬ 
ple ; zinc, white, fringed with red; 
mercury is dispersed in splendid 
sparks. All the chymical changes 
which galvanism produces prove that 
its positive electricity is derived from 
the oxygen in the fluid, and the ne¬ 
gative from the anti-oxygen princi¬ 
ple, which chymists sometimes de¬ 
fine as alkaline, and sometimes as 
inflammable. The zinc plate be¬ 
comes an oxyde of zinc, and its hy¬ 
drogen disengaged, producing a cur¬ 
rent of negative electricity, while the 
oxygen flowing to the surface of the 
zinc, produces a counter current. 
The copper unaffected is a mere con¬ 
ductor and reactor until it becomes 
coated with particles of the oxyde 
of zinc, carried to it by the hydrogen 
current. In the mean time the ap¬ 
paratus is surrounded with more ox¬ 
ygen than the zinc will appropriate. 

If the positive end be put into a 
blue infusion it converts it to red; 
and the negative in another vessel, 
converts the blue to green; and the 
same characters tick effects attend 
the action on metals, while, as it is a 
case of identical restoration, its effect 
on intermediate bodies, like that of 
electricity, is very capricious. The 
intensity of action appears to arise 
from the fluid containing a higher 
proportion of the elementary causes 
than the air in the production of com¬ 
mon electricity, while the volume is 
less. 

The mechanical action is so in¬ 
tense, that it converts sulphuriek 
acid into oxygen and sulphur, and 
other acids into their elements, car¬ 
rying an opposite element to the op¬ 
posite pole; and even decomposes 
earths, or gives them new charac¬ 
ters. 

The action is produced by the con¬ 
trasted degree in which the metals 
are affected by oxygen; the highest 
is zinc, then tin, iron, lead, copper, 
silver, gold, platina, which latter are 
the lowest in oxygen assimilation. 
When alkaline solutions are used, the 
negative becomes positive, and posi¬ 
tive negative; and iron in the last fol¬ 
lows copper. 

If water conducts 1, muriatick acid 
conducts 2.46, and acetick acid 2.4; 
and in equal quantities of galvanick 
action, they conduct in .4 of the time. 


Mr. Morgan found that a perfect 

vacuum exhibited no electricity. 

Pouellit conceives that the con¬ 
ducting powers of metallick wires 
are inversely as their lengths. 

Davy’s experiments depended on 
the nature of the galvanick power 
which he never considered, but by 
uniting the oxygen of the galvanism 
with tne alkalis, lie converted soda 
into a substance which he called so¬ 
dium, and potass into potassium, 
a species of evanescent metallick 
atoms. Soda thus imbibed from the 
galvanism 2 parts in 7 of oxygen; 
and potass 1 in 6. Their specifick 
gravities to water, are as 9 to 10, and 
as 6 to 10, or double and treble that 
of cork. 

The positive wire in galvanism 
combines with oxygen and chlorine, 
and the negative pole with hydrogen 
and nitrogen. Therefore the first two 
are called electro-negative, and the 
last two electro-positive, because 
they act on bodies contrary ways. 

The grand electrical battery of 
Van Marum was 130 square feet. 
The galvanick battery of the Royal 
Institution consists of 2000 plates 4 
inches square, or 222 square feet. 

Oxydation of metals creates or 
accompanies electrical action. In 
the common machine the electri¬ 
city is promoted by the oxydation of 
the amalgam, and therefore the best 
is made with tin and zinc. • 

It is stated that a machine acts as 
well in hydrogen gas and in car- 
bonick acid gas as in atmospherick 
air, for like air, they are non-con¬ 
ductors of electricks. 

When a discharge is made through 
a solution of sulphate of copper, tne 
metal revives round the negative 
wire, and the effect changes as the 
wires are made positive or negative; 
the negative wire always'separating 
oxygen from its combinations, and 
the positive wire effecting the union 
of oxygen with the bases. In solu¬ 
tions of neutral salts the earthy bases 
appear at the negative, and the acids 
at the positive wire. 

Coulomb, by a series of very accu¬ 
rate experiments, determined that 
the action of magnets is reciprocally 
as the squares of the distance. 

It appears by Barlow’s Experi- 




ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM, MAGNETISM. 


ments, that the power of a magnet 

as of an electrical conductor does 
not depend on the quantity or solid 
contents, but on the extent of sur¬ 
face presented to the air. Thus a 
piece of wood covered with thin lay¬ 
ers of magnetick ore, and a con¬ 
ductor of silver paper, covered with 
gold leaf, are as powerful and effi¬ 
cient as magnets of solid ore, or con¬ 
ductors of solid metal of equal su- 
perfices. 

The actions and reactions of the 
load-stone and iron were known to 
the ancients, but polarity was not 
discovered till the 12th century. The 
first mariner’s compass was shown 
at Venice in 1260, by Paulus Vene- 
tus. In China it has been used from 
the earliest times. 

By recent delicate experiments of 
Arago, &c. it appears that all metals 
as well as iron or nickel are non-mag- 
neticks; and in relation to electri¬ 
city are like non-electricks, conse¬ 
quently the identity of electricity, 
galvanism, and magnetism as varied 
effects of common causes seems to 
be more.closely established. 

In 1662 the magnetick and terres¬ 
trial meridians coincided at London, 
but since that time the variation in¬ 
creased in 1818 to 24° 17' w r est. 
When first observed at London, 
about 250 years since, the variation 
was 11° 15' east, or one point. 
In Baffin’s Bay it is from forty 
to fifty degrees. There is also a 
daily variation observed by Beaufoy 
of from 6 minutes to 15, and the 
greatest in summer. The sun seems, 
therefore, to generate the delicate 
electricity which produces magnet¬ 
ism. 

The northern voyagers agree that 
there is a magnetick pole at about 
70° north lat. and 90° W. long.; and 
Hansteen places another in 85° N. 
lat. and 101° E. long. 

In Iceland the present variation 
is 40° west ; and in Greenland 51° 
west; at Petersburgh 8° %vest; and 
so near as Stockholm 15° w r est; 
while at Christiana it is 20° west. 
On the western coast of America it 
is from 20° to 35° east. 

The magnetick equator intersects 
the earth’s equator, and gives no 
variation at 108 degrees, 125°, 175°, 
and 335°, reckoning westerly. 


_155 

The curves produced round mag¬ 
nets by particles of steel dust, do 
not arise from any current, but each 
particle acquires a north and south 
pole; and if needles were employed, 
each would range itself in the direc¬ 
tion of the curve, and be found to 
have acquired contrary poles. 

Magnetick ore when found has no 
polarity, but acquires this property 
in the air, and then is capable of 
transferring it to bars of steel. 

Every particle of the surface of a 
magnet has two poles, and the power 
at the ends is the accumulated 
power of all the atoms operating as 
by acceleration. 

In north latitudes, the south pole 
of the magnet raises most iron and 
vice versa. 

Every bar of iron which does not 
lie in the plane of the magnetick 
equator is essentially magnetick ; or, 
in other words all particles of iron 
have a disposition, by some peculiar 
action and reaction, to range them¬ 
selves in the plane of the magnetick 
equator. If a poker for example, be 
simply held perpendicular to the ho¬ 
rizon, it will, as the result of its po¬ 
sition, exhibit magnetism at both 
ends; and it will occasion the north 
pole of the compass to recede at its 
lower end and cause an approach to 
the south pole, and vice versa. If it 
be laid in the plane of the magnet¬ 
ick equator, no action and reaction 
will take place; or, if it be laid east 
and west in the line which intersects 
the plane of the horizon and the 
plane of the magnetick equators, no 
action takes place ; but if while per¬ 
pendicular to the horizon or parallel 
to the magnetick axis, it be struck 
at the ends with a hammer or vi¬ 
brated by friction, then the magnet¬ 
ick action is facilitated or increased, 
and its afieetions on a compass are 
greatly increased. On the other 
hand, after being so excited, if struck, 
on being laid in the plane of the 
magnetick equator, the excitement 
instantly abates. 

If a needle or small bar of iron bo 
set on the end of the poker, and both 
are struck, the needle or small bar 
become at once a perfect needle, 
adapted to every purpose of a com¬ 
pass. These experiments are deci¬ 
sive of all the hitherto puzzling phe 






156 


ASTRONOMY. 


nomena of magnetism. For if we 
suppose that there is some circula¬ 
tion in the plane of the magnetick 
equator, and that iron, as the only 
non-magnetick or impervious body, 
by reaction, produces a force tending 
to conformity, then there is no diffi¬ 
culty in explaining all the pheno¬ 
mena, and all the supposed attrac¬ 
tions and repulsions of magnetism. 


ASTRONOMY. 

The British Museum contains the 
original work of Copernicus on the 
Solar system. Its title is— 

“ Nicolai Copernici Toriensis 
de Revolutionibvs Orbium coeles- 
tium Libri vi.—Habes in hoc ope- 
reiam recens nato, & oedito studiose 
lector, Motus Stellarum, tarn fix- 
arum, quam erraticarum cum ex uc- 
teribus, cum etiam ex recentibus 
obseruationibus restitutus : & noois 
insuper ac admirabilibus, hypothe- 
sibus ornatos. Habes etiam Tabulas 
expeditisimas ex quibus eosdem ad 
quodius tempus quam facilli me cal- 
culare poteris. Lgitur erne, lege, 
fruere. 

Norembergse apud Joh. Petreium, 
Anno M D XLIII. 

It is dedicated— 

Ad Sanctisimum Dominum Pav- 
lvm III. Ponfificiem Maximvm. 

And there is a laudatory letter 
Nicolavs Sciionbergivs, Cardinalis 
Capuanus, Nicolaro Copernico, S. 
dated Rome, calend. Novembris, 
anno M D XXXVI. 

It is a small folio of 196 pages, full 
of diagrams, and well printed at the 
expense of the Cardinal. 

The first ftcorded observatory 
was on the top of the temple of Be- 
lus; the tomb of Osymandias, in 
Egypt, was another, and it con¬ 
tained a golden circle 200 feet in dia¬ 
meter : that at Benares was at least 
as ancient as these. The first in 
Europe was at Cassel in 1561 ; that 
of Tycho Brahe was the second in 
1576, at Uraniburg. The next was 
at Greenwich in 1675, and contains 
a transept circle by Troughton ; a 
transit instrument of eight feet, by 
Bird ; two Mural quadrants of eight 
\ feet, and Bradley’s zenith sector. 
The telescopes are 40 and CO inch 


achromaticks, and a six feet reflec¬ 

tor : there is also a famous camera 
obscura; and Flamstead had a deep 
well now filled up. The Paris ob¬ 
servatory was built in 1667; that 
of Berlin in 1711; that of Nurem¬ 
berg in 1678; that of Bologna in 
1714; and that of Pisa in 1730 ; that 
of Utrecht in 1690; that of Copen¬ 
hagen in 1656; that of Stockholm in 
1746; and that of Lisbon in 1728. 
Latterly every university has had its 
observatory; and there are also seve¬ 
ral private ones scattered over Europe 
and the United States. The latitude 
and longitudes of some of the princi¬ 
pal observatories are as under 

Greenwich 51° 23' 39" First Meridian 

Paris.48 50 14 2 20 15 E. 

Gottingen • 51 31 50 9 56 30 E. 

Berlin.52 31 45 13 22 15 E. 

Dublin ••••53 23 13 6 20 30 VV. 

Edinburgh 55 57 57 3 10 21 W. 

Upsal.59 51 30 17 39 0 E. 

Petersbur. 59 56 23 30 18 45 E. 

Pekin ••••-39 54 13 116 27 45 E. , 

The Antiquity of astronomy de¬ 
pends on the following data:— 

1. The Hindoos assert the record 
of observations 3102 years before the 
Christian era, i. e. 754 years before 
Moses’s deluge in 2343 B. C.; and 
these observations agree with the 
most accurate modern tables, in¬ 
cluding the corrections of refined 
theory. 

2. The Chaldeans had made ob¬ 
servations which extended 1903 years 
before the taking of Babylon by 
Alexander, i. e. 2233 B. C., or within 
100 years of Moses’s deluge. 

3. The Egyptians claimed 48853 
years of observations which, by mis¬ 
take, may have been called years, by- 
Diodorus, instead of moons, and if 
so, this gives a date of 3S00 years 
B. C. 

4. Then the Persians go back to the 
period when Aldebaren was on the 
equinox, now advanced two signs 
7° 20', which would have been” in 
3018 B. C. 

5. The Chinese assert that Fohi in 
2753 B. C. constructed astronomical 
tables, and that in 2697 Hoangti 
made an armillary sphere and they 
record a conjunction of the five 
planets which really happened in 
2449. 







ASTRONOMY. 


6. The Zodiack of Tentyra places 

the equinox in the middle of Aqua¬ 
rius which indicates an advance of 
two signs 15° since its formation, 
and carries us back to 3600 B. C. 

The science must also have been 
long progressing to a state in which 
it recorded these formal observa¬ 
tions. 

The earliest Hindoos practised tri¬ 
gonometry and sexagesimal arith- 
metick, and taught that the earth 
was spherical, turned on its axis, 
&c. 'they then took latitudes and 
longitudes, knew the diameter of the 
earth to be 1600 yojan«is, and the 
moon’s distance 51570, or 32 diame¬ 
ters. 

In one yug they say the Sun, Mer¬ 
cury and Venus, or Surya, Budha, 
and Sucra make 4320000 revolu¬ 
tions. 

The Hindoos call 


The Sun.Surva, 

Mercury.Budha, 

Venus .Sucra, 

Mars .Mangala, 

Jupiter .Vrihaspati, 

Saturn .Sani, 

Moon .Chandra. 


It seems probable that Aristarchus 
readjusted the zodiacal signs, for the 
present advance of 29 degrees carries 
us back 2088 years, near the age of 
Aristarchus. The Balance and Virgo 
determine the equinox and harvest, 
and accord beyond all question. 

Baiily maintains, from oriental re¬ 
cords, that astronomy was cultivated 
in Egypt and Chaldea 2800 B. C. In 
Persia 3209. In India 3101, and in 
China 2952. 

Job, Hesiod and Homer mention 
several of the constellations. 

The Royal Library at Paris con¬ 
tains a Chinese chart of the heavens 
made about 600 B. C., in which 1460 
stars are correctly inserted. Besides 
the Pekin Gazette, the government 
publish an annual calendar, in which 
the lucky and unlucky days are in¬ 
serted, and what may be done, and 
what refrained on those days. In 
their astronomy they divide the zo¬ 
diack into 12 signs and 28 constella¬ 
tions ; and time into periods of 60 
years, instead of our centuries, and 
into revolutions of 10,800 years, in- 


_ 157 

troduced by Taotse 1500 B. C., and 
evidently referring to the revolution 
of the line of Apsides, when the Pe¬ 
rihelion and Aphelion interchange 
their positions. They were very an¬ 
cient topographers ; we refer map 
making to the 14th century; but 
there exists a map of China made 
1000 B. C., which nearly accords 
with the actual surveys made by the 
Jesuits in 1700 A. C. 

The Astrologers of Babylon are 
stated to have presented Alexander 
with astronomical observations dur¬ 
ing 430000 years. But this was likely 
to be an error of ignorant reporters 
who mistook a celestial period fixed 
by multiplication for an observation. 
Twenty revolutions of the line of 
Apsides make up this period, and 
perhaps they, with the Hindoos, 
might maintain there had been 20, as 
matter of tradition or conjecture; or 
it means moons or days. 

The Egyptians alleged, that in 
48853 years, (probably moons) the 
period from Vulcan to Alexander, 
they had accurately observed 373 
eclipses of the sun, and 832 of the 
moon. 

The Persian astronomers recorded 
their observations 3000 years before 
Christ, when Aldebaran and Antares 
were in the equinoxes, and Regulus 
and the Southern Fish in the sol¬ 
stices, or exactly N. S. E. and W. 
which agrees with the precession of 
the equinoxes. 

The Phoenicians sailed by the stars 
in the Great and Little Bear. 

In 2752 Fohi made astronomical 
tables, and in 2697, the fixity of the 
Polar Star led to the invention of 
the armillary sphere by Yuchi. In 
2513 Chueni began his reign, and in 
his time the Chinese record the visi¬ 
ble conjunction of five planets, which 
by calculation actually took pi ace in 
2449. All the fundamental elements 
of astronomical calculation appear 
to have been acquired by them long 
before the Christian era. In the 8th 
century B. C. they had a catalogue 
of 2500 stars. They divided the 
ecliptick into 365.25 parts, and mado 
the obliquity 24°, which carries back 
the period 41 centuries, the secular 
diminution being 50", or to 2200 
B. C. 

The Indian tables of great antiquity 









159 


ASTRONOMY. 


make the tropical year within 1' 53" 
of onr best tables. And other tables, 
equally accurate, appear to Bailly, 
Playfair, and other authorities, to 
have been constructed 3102 B. C. 
One of their zodiacks places Aldeba- 
ran 40' before the vernal equinox; 
which carries it back to 3163 B. C. 
Other coincidences are astonishing, 
and prove the length of their obser¬ 
vations by the perfection of their in¬ 
struments in the epoch of Adam. 
Thus the place of the sun agrees with 
our best tables within 46' 54", and 
the moon within 37' and our tables 
include various minute anomalies of 
recent discovery. The planets equally 
agree in minute particulars. 

Democritus taught that the milky 
way was caused by innumerable 
stars. Nicetas and others taught 
the diurnal motion, while Pythago¬ 
ras, who had been in India, taught 
the two-fold motions, and the mo¬ 
dern system of the world. He as¬ 
cribed eclipses to shadows, and ar¬ 
ranged the planets as in the Coper- 
nican system. The later system of 
Ptolemy was his attempted improve¬ 
ment. 

Pytheas, in 330 B. C., made the 
obliquity 23° 50', and recorded the 
connexion of the tides with the 
moon. 

Eratosthenes, in 276 B. C., made 
the obliquity 23° 51' 20". He and 
Hipparchus in the same age, Ptole¬ 
my in 130, the Arabians in 800 and 
900, and Ulugh Begh, in 1440, per¬ 
fected the outlines of the science, and 
prepared the way for Copernicus, 
who, in 1543, on the day of nis death, 
allowed his system to appear. It is 
the system of the Chaldeans, and 
nearly the same that was taught by 
Pythagoras, and will be believed by 
wise men to the end of the world. 

Tycho, Kepler, Galileo, Hevelius, 
Descartes,-Gassendi, Newton, Huy¬ 
gens, Flamstead, Hook and Halley 
distinguished the next century, ana 
though Bacon opposed himself to 
Copernicus, and preferred the Ptole- 
maick system and astrology, yet it 
triumphed, and its adoption has ren¬ 
dered astronomy the most perfect of 
the sciences. The hypothesis of 
Newton, formed in 1666, that bodies 
fall to the earth by attraction sus¬ 
tained by three other hypotheses 
about a universal gravitation, a pro¬ 


jectile force in the planets, and a va¬ 
cuum in space gave systematick 
character to the science. But Kep¬ 
ler’s approximate law that the 
squares of the times are as the cubes 
of the distances, and Fermat and 
Hooke’s law, that the forces are as 
the squares of the distances, will 
long survive Newton’s, and all hy¬ 
potheses. 

Copernicus describes attraction as 
an appetite or appetence, which the 
Creator impressed on all parts of 
matter! Kepler describes it as a 
corporeal and mutual affection tend¬ 
ing to union; and Newton as an ori¬ 
ginal power which restores lost mo¬ 
tion ! 

The whole system, and the motion 
of every planet and satellite has been 
reduced by the Editor to rectangles 
of matter and velocity, and proved to 
be exactly mechanical to the third 
and fourth places of decimals. 

The law of divergin g force from a 
central is as the number of atoms af- 
1 1 
fected, i. e. as—; and not as— 

which is a mere superficial radiation 
of light, not of momentum. 

The apparent mean diameter of 
the Sun is 32' 2", of the Moon 31' 
26£". The Earth as seen from the 
Sun is 17£". 

If the principle of terrestrial gra¬ 
vity prevailed at the sun, Dr. Young 
shows that a body would fall 450 
feet in a second, and a man be two 
tons v 

The horizontal parallex of the sun 
is between eight and nine seconds, 
and of the moon about 58 minutes. 

The sun is in the exact centre of 
the solar system, but the planets vary 
their distances by moving between 
the tangent force and the chordal 
force, every where governed by the 
sun. As a planet is not in two 
places at once, an orbit and focii are 
imaginary. The extreme distance 
is to the least distance 1017 to 973, 
1000 being the mean distance of the 
Earth. The orbit is in the exact 
form of an egg, and not an ellipse or 
section of a cone. 

On the first of January the sun’s 
diameter is 32* 35.6", ana is then in 
its perihelion, and on the first July is 






ASTRONOMY. 159 


but 31' 31" and then is farthest off, or 
in its aphelion. 

The earth’s orbit velocity is 98163, 
or 98160 feet per second; and its ro¬ 
tation from 1525.41 to 1525 per se¬ 
cond at the equator. 

The Sun is equal to 20610000 Mer¬ 
curies,to 1520000 Venuses, to 1383000 
Earths, 9394000 Mars, 973 Jupiters, 
1399.4 Saturns, and 1595.5 Her- 
schels. 

The least hourly motion of the 
sun is 2' 23", and the greatest 2' 
32.9". 

The sun’s rotation is 7418 feet per 
second, or 4.86 times the velocity of 
the earth’s equator. 

Owing to the simultaneous mo¬ 
tion of the earth, the real rotation of 
the Sun is 25 cL. 9 h. 5 6m. 

The sun’s declination, or the decli¬ 
nation of the fifteenth degree of the 
signs, is as under : 

. 5° 15' 2" 

. 16 21 26 6 

n 5^ I V5 . 22 37 32.9 

This distance of the Sun from the 
Earth, taking a degree at 69.148 
miles, at the equator, is computed 
as under, by the theory of motion, 
i. e. orbit = rotation X 4 X by fall 
of bodies. 


Log. of deg. in 365101 feet 5.562412 
X 360 . 2.556303 


8.118715 

131455000 feet or 7924 miles 
diameter. 4.935320 


-h 86163" in a day. 3.183395 

1525.4 feet per " X 4 for 
sphere.602060 


3.785455 

6101.6 central forceX fall 
per » 16.08728 . 1.206493 


4991948 

98163 feet, orbit per" X se¬ 
conds in a year ...... 7.497960 


4 12.489908 

Feet in orbit -f- 6.283 - . . .793180 


11.691728 

Feet in distance -f- 5280 . 3.722630 


Log. distance in miles . . 7.969097 


That is, the mean distance is 


93131500 miles estimated by the as¬ 
certained fall of a body in a second. 

But if the degree, as by former mea¬ 
surers, were taken at 68.75 miles, or 
363000 feet, it would reduce the dis¬ 
tance to 92572000 miles; and the ro¬ 
tation per second from 1525.4 to 
1519.6; and orbit motion per second, 
to 97600. 

It is commonly called 69£ miles, 
but 69 would be a more correct de¬ 
scription for general purposes. 

The distance estimated by the 
small parallaclick angle varies great¬ 
ly as the angle is taken. At S.75" it 
is 94 millionsat 8.6", 95 ; and ob¬ 
servers vary in so small an angle 
from .8" to .9", making a difference 
of 10 millions in the distance. 

In 1779 Herschel measured a spot 
in the sun 50000 miles in diameter. 
These spots cross the sun from east 
to west, and perform a revolution in 
27 days, 7 hours and 37 minutes, and 
show that the axis is inclined 3° 45' 
to the eastward. 

Spots in the sun have been seen to 
divide and separate in many parts. 
The)'’ consist of a dark nucleus and 
a lighter border, which last is often 
seen by itself. Wilson and Herschel 
think the spots are holes in the lu¬ 
minous solar atmosphere, or in its 
clouds, and that the nucleus is the 
body of the sun. They, however, 
make notches in the sun’s limb. 
When they disappear, they are suc¬ 
ceeded by faculte or bright spots. 
They are classed as openings, shal¬ 
lows, ridges, nodules, corrugations, 
indentations and pores. 

Many maps have been made of 
the moon and Ricciolus and Heve- 
lius assigned names to the several 
parts with latitude and longitude 
taken from lines drawn through the 
centre. One annual ridge, with a 
small central rock just S. W. of the 
centre, is called by one Hipparchus, 
and by the other, Olympus. A large 
spot, just S. E. of the centre, is called 
Ptolemus by one, and Mount Sipy- 
lus by the other. 10° 43' E. and 43° 
S. is the deep brilliant cavity called 
Tycho, or Mount Sinai, the centre 
of all the radiations in the south 
hemisphere. 

The height of the mountains in the 
moon is considerable; ten are 5 






















160 ASTRONOMY. 


miles, or nearly ; and eight are from 
3 to 4 miles. Three of the hollows are 
from3 to 4 miles; ten are from 2to 3 
miles,and as many are nearly 2 miles. 

The dark parts are not supposed 
to be water, while the high parts 
are ridges of mountains or high 
lands. The brilliant spots are hol¬ 
lows surrounded with high ridges 
with a hill in their centre. This rough 
surface is considered as volcanick ; 
and several observers, especially 
Herschel, have observed red spots 
like volcanoes. Of course combus¬ 
tion bespeaks an atmosphere, and 
observations on the horns prove that 
there is one the third of a mile high, 
creating a twilight, and a rarer one 
nearly a mile higher. 

Some moderns estimate the at¬ 
mosphere to be 1638 miles high. 

The mass of the moon is to that 
of the earth, per La Place, &.c. as 1 
to 69.79, per the tides, on theory. 
But in bulks the ratios are 1 to 47.81. 

The moon’s motions are accele¬ 
rated 11 seconds in a century; and 
in remote centuries as 11 X by the 
square of the number. Hence an 
eclipse 2000 years ago requires 20 X 
20 X 11 seconds of time to be al¬ 
lowed, or 11 hour nearly. 

The Chaldean period of 223 luna¬ 
tions, or 18 years, 11 days, 7 hours, 
42 minutes, brought the moon within 
28' 10" of the same position again as 
to nodes and longitudes; but 6890, 
or 557 years, 17f days, bring her 
within 1' 41", and then all her phe¬ 
nomena, eclipses, &c. &c. occur for 
the same period as before. 

The moon’s nodes or equinoxes go 
round the ecliptick in 6793 days, or 
in the Chaldean period. 

The moon is 24 minutes longer in 
performing her orbit when the earth 
is in its perihelion than its aphelion. 

It was a fatal error of Newton’s 
in asserting that the moon falls but 
16 feet in a minute. As matter of 
undeniable fact it falls 128820 ft. in 
every minute, and has fallen 128820 
feet m every minute , without excep¬ 
tion or abatement, ever since it was 
a moon. 

The moon’s mean motion in her 
orbit is 3372 feet per second, and to 
produce this motion, the two forces 
at right angles must be 2146.9 feet, 


and this'is her mean fall towards tho 
earth in every second. In a minute 
it is 2146.9 X 60 = 128820 feet as the 
actual fall, and this agrees with the 
radius divided by the number of mi¬ 
nutes in the fourth of a lunation. 
Now a body at the earth falls but 
16.0875 feet in a second, and by ac 
celeration for a minute but 58000 ft.; 
there is therefore no likeness what¬ 
ever in the effects as has been ima¬ 
gined and often stated. Those who 
make the moon fall but 16 feet in a 
minute instead of 12S820 feet, do it 
by making a paper orbit for the 
moon, ana then they compare the 
paper orbit of their own invention 
with the real motion of the earth, 
instead of comparing one actual fact 
with another actual fact. 

The moon increases in velocity 
11" in 100 years. 

The exact interval of the moon’s 
conjunctions with the sun is 29.5- 
305887 days. 

The moon’s diameter in apogee is 
28' 55.84", and in perigee 33' 56." 
Her equatorial parallax varies also 
from 63' to 62'. 

The moon’s distance is computed 
as follows by parallax. This has 
been taken between 61' 32" and 54' 
4" ; and La Place makes it 56' 34.2". 


As sine 56' 34.2". 8.21448 

To radius.10 

So is earth’s semi-diameter 3.59748 

13.59748 
- 8.21448 

241547 miles =. 5.38300 

Her size is determined by the an¬ 
gle which she presents, which is 
31' 26.5". 

As radius.10 

To sine 31' 26.5".7.96118 

So is log. distance. 5.38300 

13.34418 

10 

2209 miles =. 3.3-1418 


When the new moon is within 18 
degrees of the node, there is an 
eclipse of the sun ; and when the full 
moon is within 12 degrees of the 
node, she will pass in"the earth’s 
shadow and be eclipsed. 
















ASTRONOMY. 


161 


The harvest moon arises from the 

varied inclination of the Zodiack in 
rising and setting, and this makes a 
difference in the moon’s rising of 
an hour, as 1 h. 17 minutes, or 17 mi¬ 
nutes. In 1839 and 1857 there will 
be striking harvest moons. 

The axis of the moon is inclined 
to the plane of her orbit 88° 17'. 

The cube root of the square of a 
planet’s period multiplied by 1.83, is 
its distance in millions of miles uni¬ 
versally, P § X 1-83 = D. 

If all the known planets were as¬ 
sembled in one, it would be the 557th 
of the sun ; and with equal force 
would be 590 millions of miles dis¬ 
tant. 


Lagrange demonstrated that the 
inequalities of the planetary motions 
are periodical. The lines of apsides 
and the periods being constant. 

The period of a planet which moves 
but 500 feet in a second, would 
be 10 millions of years, and its dis¬ 
tance 2400000 millions of miles, or 
the distance of the nearest fixed 
stars. 

The Newtonian theory assumes 
that the matter of the planets vary 
in density, thus—Water being 1; the 
Sun is 1-jSg-; Mercury, 91; Venus 
5 H; the Earth. 4h Mars, 3^; Jupiter, 
-Jj, or equal to water; Saturn, 
rather heavier than cork; and Her¬ 
schel, •i a i a r, equal to water. Others 
reasonably allege, that all planetary 
matter must be of average density, 
and the new mechanical theory 
finds an exact accordance on the 
principle of equal density. 

Herschel could see no spots on 
Mercury; but Schroeter alleges that 
he did, and saw mountains 10 miles 
high. He considers the rotation as 
241 days. 

Spots have been seen on Venus; 
but Herschel saw none, only a dense 
and enlightened atmosphere. Schro¬ 
eter saw a mountain 22 miles high, 
another 19, and two others 11. He 
makes the rotation 23h. 20' 54". 
Many have believed that they have 
seen a satellite, distant 66£ semi-di¬ 
ameters. 


The enlargement of the light part 
of the moon, and the enlargement in 
the horizon, are optical illusions — 
N 2 


one owing to bright objects enlarg¬ 
ing pencils of light, and the other 
owing to the mind placing the moon 
at a greater distance, while the an¬ 
gle is the same. 

When Venus is brightest, and at 
the same time at its greatest north 
latitude, it can then be seen by the 
naked eye at any time of the day. 
This happens once in about 8 years. 

Vince. 

Mars and Mercury are the most 
eccentrick of the planets; that of 
Mars being 1-tentn, and that of 
Mercury 1-fifth nearly, Juno and 
Pallas are 1-fourth. 

Mercury never moves above 28° 
from the Sun, and therefore never 
rises or sets above 1 h. 50 min. be¬ 
fore or after the Sun, and is seldom 
seen. 

There will be transits of Mercury, 
May 4, 1832 
Nov. 7, 1835 
May 8, 1845 
Nov. 9, 1848 
Nov. 11, 1861 
Nov. 4,1868 

Venus never goes above 48° from 
the sun, and is brightest at 39°. 
Both have phases like the moon. 

There will be no transit of Venus 
till Dec. 8, 1874; but another Dec 
6, 1882. No other till 2004. 

The redness of Mars is ascribed to 
his dense atmosphere, and it appears 
to be higher than his own diameter. 

There are bright spots at the 
north and south poles of Venus, 
which Herschel ascribes to Ice; and 
the appearances in the centre are 
odd and inconceivable. 

The polar axis of Jupiter is -J^-th 
shorter than the equatorial diameter, 
and in Saturn is ^L-th, owing doubt¬ 
less to their rapid rotation round 
their axes. 

The first of Jupiter’s satellites is 
twice as large as the second, and the 
third and fourth, 5 or 6 times larger 
than the first. The third is the larg¬ 
est. 

As Jupiter’s moons move by the 
action of Jupiter on the medium of 
space with forces inversely as the 
cubes of their distance, and reac¬ 
tions as their quantities, there is an 
amusing harmony in the arithmetick 





162 


ASTRONOMY. 


of their motions, which La Place has 
developed in a series of propositions; 
and it thence appears that all cannot 
be on one side of the planet at the 
same time. Their actual sizes are 
undetermined, but as the circum¬ 
ference is equal to the falling back of 
the nodes, the sizes may easily be 
determined. 

Saturn’s ring is double, and the 
nearest is three times as broad as the 
other, one being 20000 miles broad 
and the other 7200, while the space 
between them is 2839 miles. 

The exterior ring is 205000 miles 
in diameter. The inner ring is 33000 
miles from the body of Saturn. It 
is said to rotate in llh. 16m., and the 
outer part in 17h. 10m., but Schro- 
eter doubts it. La Place is very 
hypothetical on this and other sub- 
’ects, and therefore few of his calcu- 
ations are to be relied on. The ac¬ 
curacy of mathematical results de¬ 
pends on the rigorous accuracy of 
the hypothesis applied, and La 
Place is generally absurd, and very 
superstitious. Saturn swells to¬ 
wards the Poles, and the longest 
diameter is at 43° 20', and to the 
equatorial as 36° to 35°, while the 
polar is 32°. This seems owing to 
the central action of the rings, for 
this vast planet turns in lOh. 16m., 
and the rings seem like the middle 
parts thrown off by a centrifugal 
force. 

Five of Saturn’s satellites were 
discovered in the 17th century, and 
the sixth and seventh by Herschel 
in 1789. 

Ceres ought to be taken in the 
measures of Schroeter, for Herschel 
seemed disposed to underrate the new 
discoveries of other astronomers. 
Its diameter is 1624 miles. It was 
discovered by Piazzi in 1801. 

Pallas was discovered by Olbers 
in 1802, and is 2099 miles. Juno by 
Harding, and is 1425 miles. Vesta 
by Olbers in 1807. It has been sup¬ 
posed that these planets are frag¬ 
ments of a large planet which some 
how exploded. 

The planet Herschel was dis¬ 
covered with a five foot achroma- 
tick telescope, on the 13th March, 
1781, and though its distance is 1800 
millions of miles, yet, if the distance 
of the nearest fixed star is 36000000 


millions, and the mid-distance 18- 
000000 millions, there is 10000 thou¬ 
sand times the distance of Herschel 
for 10000 planets equally distant, from 
Herschel to the Sun. 


The Satellites revolve as under: 



r 4 


m 


d. h. m. 

d. h. m. 

d. h. m. 

First. . 

1 18 28 

0 22 37 

5 21 25 

Second 

3 13 14 

1 8 53 

817 1 

Third.. 

7 3 43 

1 21 18 

10 23 4 

Fourth 

16 16 32 

2 17 45 

1311 5 

Fifth. . 


4 12 25 

38 149 

Sixth . 
Seventh 


15 22 41 
79 7 54 

107 16 40 


The satellites of Herschel revolve 
perpendicular to our ecliptick, and of 
course neither direct nor retrograde. 

No fact yet verifies the Chaldean 
theory that the comets have regular 
orbits; one or two have been sur¬ 
mised as identical, but it is doubtful; 
one is said to have a period of 76 
years, and therefore ought to appear 
in 1834, but there are few years with¬ 
out them; 5£ years is ascribed to 
another, 6.7 to a third—but mere 
guess. 

100 comets have entered the solar 
system with declination from 80° to 
96°, 89 from 70 to 80; 79 from 60 to 
70; 63 from 50 to 60; 84 from 40 to 
50, and only 90 below 40°. Only 24 
have passed between Mercury and 
the sun, 47 within Venus, and 58 be¬ 
tween Venus and the earth’s orbit, 
and 73 between the Earth and Mars. 
The rest betvveen Mars and Jupiter’s 
orbits. Their orbits seem to be de¬ 
flected or bent when they arrive at 
the plane of the zodiack. Astrono¬ 
mers are beginning to suspect from 
their motions, that there is a resist¬ 
ing medium in space; a fact not to 
be doubted. 

Comets are chiefly remarkable for 
a luminous projection in a line di¬ 
rectly opposite to the sun, which 
therefore follows them as they ap¬ 
proach the sun, and goes before them 
as they leave the sun, and is a head 
or tail as their positions vary; by 
the vulgar this luminous projection 
is always called a tail. Comets have 
very large atmospheres, and Hers¬ 
chel thinks some of them are all at¬ 
mosphere ; of course then the sun’s 














astronomy. 


rays pass through the spherical at¬ 
mosphere, just like light through a 
glass globe, and the projection in¬ 
creases in length as it approaches 
the luminous sun. This simple cause 
and effect did not however accord 
with one of Newton's hypotheses— 
that which asserted a vacuum in 
space, and therefore various irrele¬ 
vant theories have been imagined. 
When a comet has a distinct nucleus 
the projection is divided in the mid¬ 
dle by a sensible line, as that of 1811; 
these projections are some millions 
of miles long, and some even 80 or 
150 millions. 

The comet of 1811 was 10900 miles 
in diameter, i. e. twice the bulk of 
the earth, and its luminous projec¬ 
tion was 132 millions of miles. 

Schroder. 

But Lambert calculated that the 
comet of 1811 was 17 times larger 
than Jupiter, or 25100 times larger 
than the earth. 

The eomet of 1680, the largest in 
modern times, had its orbit inclined 
61® 22' 55", and passed within half a 
million of miles of the sun’s surface 
with a direct motion. 

The comet of 1770 passed within 
two millions of miles of the earth. 

The nebulae or cluster of stars, 
called the milky way by the ancients, 
appears as a permanent luminous 
cloud; and as our sun and system 
are in the midst of it, the circle goes 
round the heavens. The larger visi¬ 
ble stars, unless other remote nebu¬ 
lae, are all part of the cluster. It is 
most luminous or thickest in the 
constellation of the Ship near the 
Great Dog. In Ophiuchus it divides, 
but reunites. It is supposed to con¬ 
tain millions of stars, and perhaps 
each 30 or 40 millions of millions of 
miles asunder. In such an arrange¬ 
ment only 17 would be nearest and 
largest, and it is so, for there are so 
many of the first magnitude. 

Hipparchus, in 128 B. C., made a 
catalogue of 1022 stars, all that can 
be seen with the naked eye. Flam- 
stead, with telescopes, made another 
of 2884. Bode, in 1800, of 27000; 
and Lalande, same year, of 50000. 
Herschel computed 50000 in nearly 
six degrees of the milky way. 

If at the stars the earth’s orbit is 
i', the distance is 40 billions of miles. 


_J63 

Observations prove that it is not 2", 
and the distance is taken at 36 bil¬ 
lions. Herschel considered the milky 
way to be a nebulas or cluster of 
stars, in nearly the middle of which 
is our sun, all the separate visible 
stars being part of it. He counted 
2500 similar nebulte or clusters in the 
heavens. 

Space seems to be occupied with 
clusters of stars, se; ving as separate 
suns to planets and systems. The 
clusters are of all forms. That of 
the milky way is like a tuning fork, 
and all the visible single stars belong 
to it, besides the myriads of the milky 
way. 

The distance of the remotest fixed 
stars supposed to be the nebulous 
clusters, may be best conceived by 
Herschel’s idea that the light ha3 
been 48000 years progressing to us 
at its velocity of a million of miles in 
five seconds. 

There are 34 northern constella¬ 
tions, 28 of which are ancient; and 
45 southern, 14 of which were an¬ 
cient. The British catalogue Contains 
17 stars of the first magnitude, 79 of 
the second, 223 of the third, and 510 
of the fourth magnitude, being those 
commonly discerned by the naked 
eye. It gives 695 of the fifth magni¬ 
tude, and 1604 of the sixth magni¬ 
tude; in all 3128. The stars of the 
first magnitude are— 

Aldebaran.in Taurus. 

Castor.in Gemini. 

Regulus.in the Lion. 

Spica .in Virgo. 

Antares.in Scorpio. 

Dubhee.in the Great Bear. 

Capella.in Auriga. 

Arcturus.in Boofes. 

Vega...in Lyra. 

Deneb.in Cygnus. 

Achernar.in Eriaanus. 

Betelgeuse.in Orion. 

Canopus.in Argo. 

Syrius.in the Great Dog. 

Procyon.in the Little Dog. 

Cor Hvdrce-in Hydra. 

Fomelhaut.in the Sou’n Fish. 

The twelve signs of the zodiack, 
and the number of stars recorded in 
them in the tables, are as under— 

°|° Aries. 67 

ft Taurus.143 

U Gemini.87 

52 Cancer.S7 
























164 


ASTRONOMY. 


ft Leo.101 

W% Virgo.117 

Libra. 53 

Scorpio .... 37 
J Sagittarius... 73 
YJ Capricornus . . 54 
Aquarius .... 119 
K Pisces.115 

The Greeks and Arabians bor¬ 
rowed the Zodiack from the Hin¬ 
doos, to whom, according to Sir W. 
Jones, it has been known from time 
immemorial. 

There are 28 stars which change 
their colours. 

Algol varies its brightness from a 
second to fourth magnitude every 
2d. 20h. 49'. 


Arcturus has a southern motion of 

3' 53" in a century. 

If the latitude is deducted from 90°, 
the difference is the circle of stars at 
each opposite pole, which never rise 
or set in that latitude. 

The Arabian astronomers under 
the Caliphs in 995, had a quadrant of 
21 feet 8 inches radius, and a sextant 
67 feet 9 inches radius. 

Kepler promulgated three laws 
of planetary motion: 1. That the 
squares of the times are as the cubes 
of the distances. 2. That a planet 
moves through equal areas in equal 
times; and, 3. That the planets de¬ 
scribe elliptical orbits with the sun 
in one of the foci. 


Rising, Southing, and Setting of the Pleiades, for every 5th Day in the 
Year, to determine the Hour of the Night, in the Latitude of England. 


1 

b 

& 

Rise. 

South. 

Sets. 

1 

& 

Rise. 

South. 

Sets. 


ve 
















co 








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ASTRONOMY. 


One tide lengthens the earth’s ra¬ 

dius on one side, and then the equal 
force of rotation demands that the 
opposite radius be lengthened also, 
and hence opposed tides. 

The square root of the earth’s orbit 
motion, V 98163 = 323 is a mean 
proportional between the rotation 
and the fall of a body. The moon’s 
orbit motion is a mean proportional 
of the earth’s bulk by the earth’s 
orbit motion. The orbits of the pla¬ 
nets are a mean proportional of the 


165 

sun’s bulk by the sun’s progressive 
velocity. 

A body after falling 189 seconds, 
acquires a velocity of 6100 feet per 
second, equal to the whole centripe¬ 
tal force of the earth’s surface. 

The chord of the arc of a quadrant 
is the square root of two or 1.41415, 
hence every radius by 1.41415 is the 
chord; or by 1.5708 is the arc of the 
quadrant. 

The earth’s diameter is repeated 
about 74000 times in the orbit, which 
is of an egg-form. 


Increase and Decrease of Days for every Fourth Day in Latitude of 52°. 


b 

January. 

February. 

March. 

April. 

May. 

June. 


Increase. 

Increase. 

Increase. 

Increase. 

Increase. 

Increase. 


h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

l 

0 8 

1 26 

3 12 

5 14 

7 6 

8 32 

5 

0 14 

1 38 

3 26 

5 30 

7 20 

8 38 

9 

0 20 

1 54 

3 42 

5 44 

7 34 

8 44 

13 

0 28 

2 8 

3 58 

6 0 

7 46 

8 48 

17 

0 38 

2 24 

4 14 

6 16 

7 56 

8 50 

21 

0 50 

2 40 

4 30 

6 30 

8 8 

8 52 

25 

1 2 

2 54 

4 46 

6 44 

8 18 


29 

Ol 

1 16 


5 2 

5 10 

6 58 

8 26 

8 30 


0 1 





& 

July.’ 

August. 

September 

October. 

November 

December 


Decrease. 

Decrease. 

Decrease. 

Decrease. 

Decrease. 

Decrease. 


h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

h. m. 

1 

0 6 

1 14 

3 2 

5 0 

6 58 

8 30 

5 

0 10 

1 26 

3 18 

5 16 

7 12 

8 36 

9 

0 16 

1 38 

3 34 

5 30 

7 26 

8 44 

13 

0 24 

1 52 

3 48 

5 46 

7 40 

8 48 

17 

0 32 

2 6 

4 4 

6 2 

7 52 

8 50 

21 

0 42 

2 22 

4 20 

6 18 

8 4 

8 52 

25 

0 52 

2 36 

4 36 

6 34 

8 16 

Incr. 2 

29 

1 4 

2 50 

4 52 

6 48 

8 26 



As every body which goes round 
in an orbit turns from that cause 
once on its axis, so the earth turns 
an extra time before it returns to the 
same star, and exactly by this quan¬ 
tity at the equator, the stars go back 
by a motion of 22700 miles, called 
the precession with reference to the 
seasons, in 25868 years. The moon’s 
nodes fall back also by a quantity 
exactly equal to its circumference 
6730 miles in 19 years. The line of 
Apsides advances 50617 per annum, 


or 360 deg. in 20931 years, owing to 
the earth passing quicker from the 
perihelion to the apnelion than the 
contrary. 

The solstitial points are the first 
degrees of Cancer and Capricorn; 
and the equinoxial points are the first 
degrees of Aries and Libra. 

At 5 feet high the dip of the horizon 
is 2' 8" ; at 10' feet 3' 1" ; at 20 feet 41 
16" ; at 30 feet 5 f 14" ; at 50 feet 6 
44" ; and at 100 feet 9 1 33". 





































ASTRONOMY. 


166__ 

Right-Ascensions in Time, and Declinations and Magnitudes of Forty 
remarkable Fixed Stars, with their Names. 


Names of the Stars. 


Rt. Asc. 


Declination. 


Mag. 


Polestar, Alruccabah - - - - 

Androgird. Mirach - - - - 

Andro. foot, Almach - - - - 

Ram’s follow-horn. 

Whale’sja. Menkar - - - - 

Medusa’s hea. Algol - - - - 

Perseus’ si. Algemb - - - - 

Brightest of the 7st. - - - - 

Bull’s eye, Aldebar - - - - - 

Auriga’s sh. Capella - - - - 

Orion’s 1. foot, Rigel - - - - 

Bull’s north horn. 

Orion’s 1. sh. Bellat. - - - - 

Orion’s girdle ------ 

Orion’s r. sh. Betelg. - - - - 
Great Dog, Sirius - - - - - 

1st Twin, Castor. 

Little Dog, Procyon - - - - 

2d Twin, Pollux. 

Hydra’s heart, alp.. 

Lyon’s heart, Regu. - - - - 
Great Bear, L. Pointer - - - 
Great Bear, U. Pointer - - - 
Lion’s tail, Deneb - - - - - 

Great Bear’s tail, Aliath - - - 
Virgius’ spike ------ 

Dragon’s tail ------ 

Bootes, Arcturus. 

Libra, South. Scale - - - 

Libra, North. Scale - - - - 

North Crown. 

Scor. heart, Antares - - - - 

Her head, R. Alget. - - - - 

Head of Serpentarius - - - - 

Drag, head, Rastaben - - - 

The Harp, Lyra. 

The Eagle, Atair - - - - - 

S. Fish, Fomalhaut - - - - 

Pegasus’ w. Markab - - - - 

Andromeda’s head - - - - - 


As large masses of matter are pro¬ 
bably alike, so the density of the 
planets would be equal. 

The perihelion point moves through 
20940 

a sign in ---=1745 years, hence 

12 

it is 5235 years in passing from the 
equator to the tropicks, and vice 
versa. It is now in 9 deg. of Capri¬ 
corn, and was in that southern tro- 
pick 500 years since; thence it last 


h. 

m. 

, 5. 

o 

1 

n 



0 

52 

20 

88 

14 

25 

n 

2 

0 

58 

34 

34 

33 

29 

n 

2 

1 

51 

41 

41 

21 

50 

n 

2 

1 

55 

55 

22 

30 

47 

n 

2 

2 

51 

50 

3 

18 

8 

n 

2 

2 

55 

12 

40 

10 

29 

n 

2 

3 

10 

7 

49 

8 

15 

ri 

2 

3 

35 

37 

23 

28 

36 

n 

3 

4 

24 

27 

16 

5 

43 

n 

1 

5 

1 

56 

45 

46 

40 

n 

1 

5 

4 

56 

8 

26 

24 

s 

1 

5 

13 

40 

28 

25 

37 

n 

2 

9 

14 

54 

6 

9 

21 

n 

2 

5 

26 

4 

1 

20 

27 

s 

2 

5 

44 

21 

7 

21 

41 

n 

I 

6 

36 

20 

16 

27 

2 

s 

1 

7 

21 

49 

32 

18 

59 

n 

1 

7 

28 

49 

5 

43 

45 

n 

1 

7 

33 

3 

28 

29 

59 

n 

2 

9 

17 

45 

7 

46 

46 

s 

2 

9 

57 

42 

12 

56 

29 

n 

1 

10 

49 

40 

57 

27 

3 

n 

2 

10 

51 

16 

62 

49 

45 

n 

2 

11 

38 

50 

15 

41 

36 

n 

2 

12 

45 

13 

57 

2 

57 

n 

2 

13 

14 

40 

10 

6 

37 

s 

1 

13 

58 

59 

65 

20 

8 

n 

2 

14 

6 

32 

20 

13 

43 

n 

1 

14 

39 

39 

15 

11 

54 

a 

2 

15 

6 

16 

8 

38 

3 

S'/'. 

2 

15 

25 

58 

27 

23 

58 

n 

i 2 

16 

17 

10 

25 

58 

21 

s 

' 1 

17 

5 

32 

14 

37 

48 

li 

2 

17 

25 

§9 

12 

43 

9 

n 

2 

17 

51 

58 

51 

31 

5 

n 

2 

18 

30 

10 

38 

36 

26 

n 

1 

19 

41 

1 

8 

21 

11 

n 

2 

22 

46 

34 

30 

40 

31 

s 

1 

22 

54 

48 

14 

7 

56 

n 

2 

23 

58 

4 

27 

59 

34 

n 

2 


passed the equator 5735 years since, 
and will return to it in 4235 years. 

The rotation of the earth and any 
planet is caused by the very same 
force, acting on its superiour hemi¬ 
sphere, as carries it from the chord 
or diagonal into the curved orbit. 
This angle is 5° 41', and the sine 993 
for radius 10000, i. e. 1 to 10.06, which 
reduced by the sine of the obliquity, 
or l to 5, gives 8.04 for that hemi¬ 
sphere, and 16.08 for both. Then 






















































ASTRONOMY. 


98163 

-= 6100 the actual force Der se- 

16.09 

cond. 

The earth’s, rotation would not 
equal its orbit motion till 64000 miles 
from the centre, hence the air may 
have w ght to^hat distance. 

The length of the day in latitude 
49, 51, 53, and 55 for the above de¬ 
clinations is as under: 

hrs. 1 h. ' h. ' 
Lat. 49--12.54 14.45 15.53 

51--12.56 14.58 16. 6 

53- -13. 3 15.10 16.40 

54- -13. 8 15.27 17. 4 

The earth’s axis is inclined 23 deg. 

2? 56", and decreases 52" in a cen¬ 
tury. 

In eclipses the word digit means 
one-twelfth part of the diameter of 
the sun and rnoon. 

The obliquity of the ecliptick va¬ 
ries above half a second per annum, 
or from 50 to 60 seconds in a cen¬ 
tury. Hipparchus fixed it at 23° 51' 
20", and it is now 23° 27' 30", making 
a difference of 23' 50" in nearly 2000 
years. The cause is the unequal dis¬ 
tribution of land and water on the 
globe, and as the inequality dimin¬ 
ishes by the washing of rains, so the 
parallelism of the diurnal and annual 
motions continually approaches. 

The experiments at Shehallien, 
&c. which determined the mean 
density of the earth 4£ times that of 
water, are founded on the assump¬ 
tion that inert bodies attract one 
another, but as a body inclines to a 
mountain, on the very same princi¬ 
ple that corks float towards bungs, 
their intercepted atmospherick pres¬ 
sure, the data are inferred to be 
fallacious. 

The zodiacal light is ascribed to the 
solar atmosphere, and to its conden¬ 
sation in the plane of the zodiack. 

The angle of 23° 27' made by the 
ecliptick with the equator determines 
all the zones and circles on the 
Globe. Thus, the tropicks are 23° 
27' on each side the equator; and the 
polar arctick and antartick circles 
are 23° 27' from the north and 
south poles. The middle regions 90 
.—46 54, or 43° 6' are the temperate 
zones. 

The casting of a nativity among 


167 

astrologers means the drawing out 
a picture of the heavens at the mi¬ 
nute of birth, in which the signs are 
disposed in 12 equal spaces, called 
houses, and the planets, &-c. put into 
the signs. On this judgement is 
given, but as there is no possible or 
probable connexion between these 
signs and the subject, so a pack of 
cards, or any other combination, 
would answer the same purpose. 

As the motion of a failing body 
will not exceed the force which pro¬ 
duces the fall, or 6100 feet per second, 
so in 189" the velocity would become 
uniform at 6100 feet per second. 
The velocity arising from continu¬ 
ous force is as the square of the 
times of falling; the first second 16.- 
08 feet nearly, or 16.085 in latitude 
51.32, so that hi 4 seconds the velo¬ 
city is 4X4X16.085—and so on. 

The fall of a body is as the ratio of 
the velocity in the orbit per second, 
98163 feet, to the velocity of the ro¬ 
tatory surface of the earth, which 
surface is 4 times the area of the 
equatorial circle, which moves 1525.6 
feet per second. 

98163 

Then-= 16.085 feet, the 

1525.6X4 

mean fall per second all over the 
earth. 

The nonagesimal degree is the 
90th of the ecliptick from the horizon. 

The solar tide, explained by Gali¬ 
leo, is to that of the moon only as 
about 1 to 5. 

The time of high-water being 
known at London, it may be known 
at the following places by adding , 
For Tinmouth Haven, Hartle-/>. m 


pool, and Amsterdam. 0 30 

Brest . 1 0 

Scilly . 1 45 

Mount’s Bay. 1 55 

Bridlington Pier and Hum¬ 
ber . 2 0 

Fowey, Loo,and Plymouth 3 10 
Dartmouth, Scarborough, 

and Hull . 3 30 

Torbay and Tinmouth •• 3 40 
Exmouth, Topsham, and 

Lime . 3 50 

Bristol and Weymouth -- 4 20 
Bridgewater and Texel • • • 4 40 
■Portland and Hartfleur-•• 5 50 
By subsir acting, 

For Leigh, Maes, and Gouries 

Gut . 0 5 













169 


ASTRONOMY. 


Gravesend, Rochester, and 


Rammekins . 1 20 

Buoy ofNore and Flushing 1 SO 
Portsmouth, Os tend, Shoe- 
Beacon, and Red-Sand 2 0 
Harwich, Dover, Spithead, 

and Calais. 3 0 

Gunfleet, Hastings, Shore- 
ham, Orfordness, and 

Dieppe . 4 0 

Yarmouth Pier & Needle 4 40 
St. Helen’s andHavre-de- 
Grace . 5 30 


The diameters of the bodies in the 
solar system are, the Sun, 883246 
miles; Mercury, 3224; Venus, 7687; 
•the Earth, 7916; Moon, 2209; Mars, 
4189; Ceres and Pallas uncertain; 
Juno, 1425; Vesta, 238; Jupiter, 
89170; Saturn, 79042; Herschel, 
35112. 

Their distance by Kepler’s law, 
D 3 : d 3 :: P 2 : p 2 are Mercury, 37 ; 
Venus, 68; Earth, 95; Mars, 144; 
Ceres, 263; Pallas, 266 ; Juno, 252; 
Vesta, 225; Jupiter, 490; Saturn, 
900 ; Herschel, 1800 millions. 

The distances by the Editor’s new 
law, D : d;: T# : t§,founded on the 
law of force, D£ ; or, 1.83 X tg = d. 
Mercury, 36.2; Venus, 67.7 ; Earth, 
93.5; Mars, 143; Jupiter, 480; Sa¬ 
turn, 890 ; and Herschel, 1800 mil¬ 
lions. 

The inclinations of their orbits to 
the plane of the ecliptick is : 


Mercury.7 0 0 

Venus • • .. 3 23 35 

Moon.5 93 

Mars .1 51 0 

Ceres. 10 37 0 

Pallas. 34 50 40 

Juno uncertain. 

Vesta. 7 8 46 

Jupiter.1 18 56 

Saturn. 2 29 50 

Herschel. 0 46 20 

Inclination of Sun’s axis, 82 44 0 

Moon’s.88 17 0 

Mars’. 59 22 0 


Periods : years, days. h. m. s. 

Mercury. 0 87 23 15 43 

Venus . 0 224 16 49 10 

Earth. 0 365 6 9 12 

Mars . 1 321 23 15 44 

Vesta. 3 240 4 55 1 

Juno . 4 130 23 57 7 

Ceres . 4 221 13 56 9 

Pallas. 4 221 17 0 6 


Jupiter . .. 

.. 11 

315 

14 27 11 

Saturn . . 

. . 29 

174 

1 51 

11 

Herschel . 

. . 83 

150 

18 0 

0 

Rotation on axis : 

days. 

h. m. 

s. 

Sun. 


25 

14 8 

0 


Mercury 
Venus. . 
Earth . . 
Mars ... 
Jupiter . 
Saturn . 


24 5 0 
23 29 59 

23 56 4 

24 39 22 
9 56 0 

10 16 2 


Eccentricity, half the major axis 
being 1 : Mercury, .2055; Venus, 
.00695; Earth, .01685; Mars, .09313; 
Vesta, .093322 ; Juno, .2549 ; Ceres, 
.07835; Pallas, .24538; Jupiter, 
.048178; Saturn, .0561C8 ; Herschel 
.04667. 

The line of Apsides, or the aphel¬ 
ion and perihelion, advances 61.45" 
per annum, chiefly owing to the 
earth moving quicker from the peri¬ 
helion to the aphelion than the con¬ 
trary. 

Twilight lasts till the sun is 18 
degrees below the horizon, when the 
solar rays are reflected from a height 
of 44 miles. The horizontal refrac¬ 
tion is 30 1 51" nearly the diameter ot 
the sun, so that the sun has set 
when his body touches the horizon 
to the eye. 

Great equation of centre : 

o » II 


Bier cur y. 28 40 0 

Venus. 47 20 0 

Earth. 1 55 30.9 

Blars. 10 40 40 

Pallas. 28 25 0 

Jupiter. 5 30 38 

Saturn. 6 26 42 

Herschel. 5 27 16 


The apparent diameter at the 
Earth of Pallas, is half a second ; of 
Juno, 3"; and of Vesta half a se¬ 
cond ; Ceres varies from 1" to 6" ; 
Herschel is 3£" ; Blercury, 10" ; Sa¬ 
turn, 18" ; Blars, 27"; Jupiter, 39" ; 
and Venus, 58". 


The line of Apsides in 100 years 
moves. 

O f II 

In Blercury. 1 33 45 

In Venus.1 21 0 

Earth.1 43 10.8 

Mars.1 51 40 

Jupiter. 1 34 33 

Saturn.1 50 7 

Herschel.1 29 2 















































ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


The perihelion of the Earth at 1° 
43' 10"8. in a century, or 61.8" per 
annum, makes a revolution in 20931 
years; and the equinoxes recede 
50.1" per annum, or 1° 23' 30" in a 
century, and make a revolution in 
25868 years. Hence, on January 1, 
1830, the perihelion was 9° 11' 6" of 
Capricorn;—i e. on the 30th of De¬ 
cember the sun is 3 millions of miles 
nearer than on the 30th of June. 

The earth’s perihelion distance, 
the mean being 1, is 9831468; and 
it is in this point when the sun is in 
9° IT 6" of Capricorn—i. e. on De¬ 
cember the 30th 1830. Adding 61.6- 
8" per annum from January 1, 1830. 
It is given thus particularly, because 
its varying declination is believed to 
be the causes of the progression of 
the seas from one hemisphere to 
another. It crossed the solstice of 
V3 in 1295, and the equator 3938, B. 
C., causing the flood of Moses; and 
it will cross it again in the year 6528, 
or in about 4700 years. 


ATMOSPHERICAL AND SERIAL 
PHENOMENA. 

The size of the volume of the ga¬ 
seous atmosphere, which accompa¬ 
nies the earth in its orbit, and rotates 
with it, is an unsolved problem. The 
twilight proves that it contains va¬ 
pours dense enough to reflect light 
as high as 44 or 45 miles. The rare¬ 
faction by solar heat, and the rota¬ 
tion, are supposed to render it an 
oblate spheroid. But as it would 
have central force till the two mo¬ 
tions were equal; so, as at the sur¬ 
face of the earth, at 3958 miles from 
the centre, it revolves with a total 
momentum of only 6101, while the 
98000 

orbit motion is 930; then- 

6101 

X 3958 — the height which it may 
rotate, or nearly 64000 miles from 
the centre, if the peculiarities of elas¬ 
ticity, &c. do not alter this result. 

Its height, as a uniform gas, of 
the same density as at the earth’s 
surface, proved by its pressure of 
2158 lbs. to the square foot, would be 
but 5.6 miles ; for a cubick foot 
weighs but H oz. which gives 29500 
feet in 2158 lbs. But the earth’s re¬ 
action, and its compression into a nar- 


169 

rowing space, and its own elasticity, 
aflord a dilatation as it ascends, m 
the geometrical ratio of the altitude. 
Of course, however, this must have 
a limit, and tables which run up the 
expanding series are fanciful. These 
show, if we believed them, that a 
cubick inch of air, at 500 miles high, 
would fill a sphere 1800 millions of 
miles in diameter; that at 7 miles it 
is equal to 4 inches; at 14 miles, 16 
inches; at 28 miles, 256; at 42 miles, 
4096; and at 49 miles, 16384. But 
probably, no gas is rarer, or much 
rarer, than hydrogen, or about thir¬ 
teen times the rarity of common air. 

Altitudes are determined by the 
law, that the densities (within known 
limits) decrease in geometrical pro¬ 
gression as the altitudes increase in 
arithmetical progression, the two 
forming a series of atmospherick lo¬ 
garithms. 

[The superficial extent of the at¬ 
mosphere at its lower surface, is 
equal to about 200,000,000 of square 
miles. We have before seen that its 
altitude, if reckoned at the uniform 
density of its lower surface, or in 
other words, according to its actual 
quantity, is equal to five miles and 
; six-tenths only. Considered, there¬ 
fore, as a fluid stratum resting upon 
the earth, the horizontal or super¬ 
ficial extent of the atmosphere is to 
its altitude or vertical dimensions as 
35,714,285 to 1; a fact that well de¬ 
serves consideration'in any physical 
estimate of its winds and currents.]* 
See page 178-9; see also Air, in 
Chymistry. 

Elevation above the level of the 
sea, or the general level of a country, 
makes a regular variation in tempe¬ 
rature ; the first 300 feet makes a 
difference of a degree, almost as truly 
as though the height were measured. 
This arises from the diminution of 
reflected heat from surrounding ob¬ 
jects. After ascending 309 feet, the 
thermometer falls a degree at 295 
feet, then at 277, 252, 223, and 192 
feet; so that at 1539 feet of elevation, 
the thermometer will fail six degrees 
in a general way, but 300 feet per de¬ 
gree is the common rule. On these 
principles, the limit of perpetual con¬ 
gelation has been theoretically cal¬ 
culated : it is made 15000 feet at the 
equator; and from that to 13000 be 

* The matter included in brackets is 
supplied by the American Editor. 










170 


ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


tween the tropicks; and from 9 to 
4000 between lat. 40 and 59 deg. 

[It has been found, however, that 
the above rule is subject to great va¬ 
riations, owing probably to the phy¬ 
sical character and temperature of 
the atmospherick currents which 
prevail in different regions and at dif¬ 
ferent altitudes. Warmer strata or 
currents are often found resting upon, 
or interposed between, those of a 
lower temperature. On the Hima¬ 
laya mountains between the latitudes 
of 28 5 and 34 5 north, the region of 
vegetation has been found to extend 
many thousand feet above the sup¬ 
posed line of perpetual congelation 
assigned to those latitudes. It is 
also remarkable that the line of per¬ 
petual snow is found at a much 
greater altitude on the northern side 
of these mountains than on the south¬ 
ern side in a lower latitude. These 
facts, with others which are obtain¬ 
ing notice, will cause a revision of 
the hitherto prevailing theories in 
meteorology.] 

The cold and heat of climates de¬ 
pend also on the vicinage of seas.— 
At Moscow, the thermometer ranges 
from 6 to 70, but at Copenhagen, in 
the same latitude, only from 27 to 65; 
so, at Vienna, it ranges from 26 to 70, 
but on the French coast, in the same 
latitude, only from 41 to 67. 

The medium annual temperature 
of the whole earth is 50 degrees. 

At the equator on the level of the 
sea, the mean annual heat is 84.2 de¬ 
grees; at lat. 45, 58 degrees ; in lat. 
50, it is 53.6 ; in lat. 60, 45 degrees; 
and in lat. 70, 33.1 deg. Thevicinily 
of the Poles, is assumed to be the 
freezing point 32 degrees. Between 
the tropicks, the variation from lati¬ 
tude is but 8 degrees ; lat. 23° 8' be¬ 
ing 76; in lat. 45, the average heat 
in summer to that in winter, is as 
120 to 42, and the Arctick circle as 
102 to 12. 


The climate of the southern hem¬ 

isphere is milder than *he north. In 
May, at Cape Horn, lat. 56, our No¬ 
vember vegetation is flourishing. 

The thermometer is usually highest 
at two o’clock in the afternoon, and 
lowest before sun-rise. 

The average temperature of the 
winter months in England is about 
40°, and of the summer months 65°. 
Devonshire and Cornwall are about 
4 deg. warmer than London. 


In the past century the severe frosts 
in England were in the winters of 
1708,1715, 1739, called the hard frost, 
1742, 1754, 17/6, 1788,1796, and 1813. 


In the counties round London the 
mean temperature and rain, in every 
month, are as under :— 


January-• .-deg. 36.1 inches 1.483 
February 

March . 

April. 

May . 

June . 

July . 

August . . . 

September . 

October . . . 

November . 

December . 


38 •••• 

.746 

43.9 

1.44 

49.9 

1.786 

54 .... 

1.853 

58.7 .... 

1.83 

61 .... 

2.516 

61.6 . . . 

1.453 

57.8 . . . 

2.193 

48.9 . . . 

2.073 

.42.9 . . . 

2.4 

39.3 . . . 

2.426 

48.5 

22.199 


The most intense cold ever known 
in London was on December 25, 
1796. The thermometer was at 2° 
below zero. 


The 14th of January, on an ave¬ 
rage of years, is the coldest day in 
the year. 

The annual average of the ther¬ 
mometer at the north and south 
points of England, Carlisle, and 
Sandwich, is 49 and 50° ; the max¬ 
imum, in 1820, being 78 and 83, and 
the minimum 12 and 27. London is 
the same as Sandwich. 


In the Gulf of Guinea the thermo¬ 
meter rises to 130°; and Humboldt 
thinks that in the air it can never 
rise above 140 ; at sea it never rises 
above 85 or 83. 


At ICinfaun’s Castle, N. B. Iat. 56° 
23' the mean temperature for 1830 
was 47.626. The rain 30.85 inches. 
Coldest day 10°, and hottest 79°. 
Barometer from 30.53 to 28.73. 


The thermometer in Italy ranges 
between 75 and 96°; and in winter, 
seldom descends below 40°, except 
in the mountains in the higher Ap- 
p: nines, where it falls to 20 deg. 


The average heat of London in the 
first sixteen v^ars of this century, 
was 50.93°. The hottest day, from 
1774 to 1817, was in July, 1803, being 
93.5, and the coldest, Dec. 25, 1796. 














A TMOSPHERICAL AN D 

At London in 1830, the highest 
point of the thermometer was 00 in 
June, and the lowest 11 in January. 
The wettest month was 2.516 in July, 
and the driest 0.746 in February. 

In New South Wales the coldest 
month averages 54°, and the hettest 
75°. It rains 100 days in the year. 
The north-west wind is a scorching 
sirocco. The air is generally dry, 
but the night dews are heavy. 

The mean temperature of Ireland 
varies from 47° to 53°. 

The average heat of Boston is 47° 
3', of Philadelphia 53° ?, of Wash¬ 
ington 58.1, of Detroit 47.4, of Cin¬ 
cinnati 56.8, of Pittsburg 54.2, of 
New Harmony 56.69, Rain 42.85, 
Charleston 57 to 60, Richmond 56.1. 

At Leeds, Yorkshire, the thermo¬ 
meter was, July 18,1825, at 92; June 
25, 1826, at 93; and Jan. 2, 1S27, at 
11 degrees. 

An iceberg seen by Parry was 
above 250 feet out of the water, and 
therefore nearly one-third of a mile 
thick. 

fin the months of March, April, 
May, and June, ice is often met with 
in the Atlantick ocean near the banks 
of Newfoundland, and sometimes as 
low as the 40th degree of latitude. It 
is brought down from the higher la¬ 
titudes by the great northern or po¬ 
lar current, which in consequence of 
its greater density passes under the 
warmer current of the gulf-stream, 
and continuing its action upon the 
deeper portions of the great icebergs 
often forces them into the bosom of 
that stream, where they soon become 
dissolved.] 

Temperature is so variable in South 
Carolina that the thermometer some¬ 
times varies 50 degrees in 24 hours ; 
it ranges no less than 83 degrees in 
the year. The rain averages^fcfty 
inches. 

Clouds and Fogs are the same 
thing. We see the whole as a cloud 
at a distance in the atmosphere, but 
when the vapour sinks to the earth 
or will not rise, and we are immers¬ 
ed in it, we call it a fog. Dew fogs 
which hang over fields are stratus 
clouds ; and fogs which involve ele¬ 
vated objects are cumulus clouds. [It 
is to circumstances of distribution, 
light, shade, and perspective, that the 


AERIAL PHENOMENA. 171 

| great variety in the appearance of 
the clouds is owing, and on this va¬ 
riety of appearance their imperfect 
classification has been founded.] 

There are seven classes of clouds: 

1. Like a lock of hair, or a feather, 
called Cirrus. 

2. A cloud in conical round heaps, 
called Cumulus. 

3. A level sheet, called Stratus. 

4. A system of small round clouds, 
Cirro-cumulus. 

5. The concave or undulated stra¬ 
tus, called Cirro-stratus. 

6. The cumulus and cirro-stratus 
mixed, called Cumulo-stratus. 

7. A cumulus, spreading out in 
cirrus and raining beneatn, called 
Nimbus. 

The cirrus is the most elevated— 
sometimes as a gauze veil—or paral¬ 
lel threads. Its height is from three 
to five miles. 

Fleecy clouds are seen over head, 
on the tops of the highest Andes, and 
on looking over the sea, a stratum of 
mist is visible at the height of 10 or 
11000 feet. Here, however, the sky 
is clearest, but it loses part of its 
clearness in passing from the high 
lands in the Torrid Zone, north or 
south. 

[Dew is the condensation of wate¬ 
ry vapour upon the surface of a con¬ 
densing body or substance. Clouds 
and fogs are watery particles which 
are condensed while floating in the 
atmosphere, vvhere they continue to 
float till precipitated, or again dis¬ 
solved. If by the concentration of 
these particles, or by additional con¬ 
densation, their weight be increased 
beyond that which the extent of their 
surface can sustain, they then descend 
in the form of rain. The formation 
of clouds and fogs, dews and rain, is 
therefore essentially the same, the 
latter being buv the continuation or 
extension of the same process which 
produced the former.] 

Evaporation is as the surface of 
water and as the temperature. 

In the temperate zone the annual 
evaporation is 37 inches, but in the 
tropicksfrom 90 to 100; and the mean 
quantity of rain is in the same pro¬ 
portion. At Bombay, in 10 years, 78 
inches per annum fell; in 1822, 113 







172 ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


inches; and in 1824 but 34. In the 
Brazils, in 1821, 280 inches fell; and 
in Cayenne, 160 inches in February 
only. At Cumana it is but 8 inches 
in the year. But in Peru none. 

The atmosphere of Greece is so 
dry that at 86° F. nearly the whole 
of the animals and vegetables dis¬ 
appear. 

The changes of the moon have no 
connexion with the weather. 

The rainy season between the tro- 
picks is when the sun is in vertical 
signs; and at other times there is 
not a cloud for months. North the 
rainy months are from April to 
October; and south, from October 
to April. 

Rain, within the tropicks, is not of 
the drizzling character of rain in the 
temperate zone, but generally falls 
in such torrents as, in other zones, 
would be called waterspouts; and 
they produce greater floods in a sin¬ 
gle day than in Europe in six days. 
Winter is distinguished from sum¬ 
mer chiefly by the quantity of rain, 
which, for six months, is often con¬ 
stant for many days together, and 
lasts a certain number of hours per 
day through the whole six months. 
The rivers, in consequence, over¬ 
flow ; and, in many countries, pro¬ 
duce general inundations in all the 
low lands, which intercept commu¬ 
nication, and, on drying off, make 
the atmosphere very unwholesome. 
Of course, such heavy and constant 
rains must tend to diminish the 
neights of the mountains and create 
embankments in the sea, as germs 
cf future land. 

The bulk and specifick gravity of 
rain water is taken, at 60 deg., as 1. 
Less heat diminishes its bulk and 
increases its specifick gravity. At 
40°, one is .9907, and specifick gra¬ 
vity 1.00094. But at 80°, the bulk 
:s 1.00242, and the specifick gravity 
.99759; and at 100°, is 1.006 and 
.39402. 

Humboldt assigns 96 inches of an¬ 
nual rain to the equatorial zone, 80 
to lat. 20, 29 to lat. 45, and 17 to lat. 
60, as a general average. 

From three to four times as much 
rain falls in a year between the tro¬ 
picks as in higher latitudes; yet the 
number of days on which it rains 
generally increases as the latitude. 


The average fall of rain for the 
United Kingdom is about 34 inches, 
but in the western and hilly counties 
is 48 or 50 inches. 

The average rain in London for 40 
years, between 1777 and 1817, was 
20.686 inches. At Paris, in 15 years, 
18.649.* At Glasgow, in 17, was 
21.033; and at Manchester, in 33, 
was 36.104. At Kendal, 1830,58.03. 

In 1800, the quantity of rain a< 
Cambridge was 25.62; Lynden, Rut¬ 
landshire, 32.35; West Riding 26.9; 
Lincoln 24.11; Chatsworth 26.73; 
Lancaster 35.93; Kendal 48.2; Exe- 
ter 24.5; Plymouth 35.5. 

The rain at Dublin is about 26 
inches, and at Cork 36. 

On the 9th of October, 1827, there 
fell at Joyeuse, in France, 29 inches 
of rain in 22 hours ; and in 11 days 
36 inches, double that at Paris in the 
year. 

The mean quantity of water held 
in a cubick foot of air, in this cli¬ 
mate, is 3.789 grains. 

[The quantity of rain falling 
at a given point is found (in the 
higher latitudes) to depend greatly 
on the proximity of that point to the 
surface of the earth, without regard 
to the altitude above the level of the 
sea: the rain guage on the top of a 
mountain giving nearly as much as 
that on the plain beneath, wdiercas 
one guage placed on the top of a 
house or church, and another below, 
give very different quantities. It ap¬ 
pears from very accurate observa¬ 
tions,that in one year there fell below 
the top of a house above a fifth part 
more rain than fell in the same space 
above the top of the same house;— 
and that there fell upon Westminster 
Abbey not much above half the 
quantity that was found to fall in 
the^bme space at the earth’s sur¬ 
face. The following observations 
may be adduced. 

Lower guage (in one year) 22.608 
inches. Middle guage, top of a house 
18.139 inches. Upper guage on 
Westminster Abbey, 12.099. 

The experiment has been repeated 
in other places with the same re¬ 
sult.] 

Hail stones fall with a velocity of 
60 or 70 feet per second. Rain from 
10 to 30 feet. From 3 to 400 tuns of 







ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 173 


rain fall annually on every acre in 
England. 

Crystals of snow are from one- 
third to one-thirty-fifth of an inch in 
diameter. Their figures are diversi¬ 
fied stars. 

The red colour of some snow is 
ascribed to a fungus which grows on 
the snow. 

The chymical difference between 
rain and snow water was determined 
by Margraaf to be very slight. 

The Aurora Borealis, though sel¬ 
dom seen in middle Europe, is almost 
constant in the Arctick and Antarc- 
tick regions, covering the whole 
heavens and eclipsing, by its splen¬ 
dour, the stars and planets. It is 
accompanied by a rustling, snapping 
noise, and taken altogether, is often 
terrifiek. Some ascribe, these phe¬ 
nomena to fluids, as electrick or mag- 
netick, of which they presume the 
existence. 

The height of the Aurora Borealis 
m the Arctick regions is only 6 or 7 
miles. A confused sound accompa¬ 
nies it, and it affects the magnetick 
needle. At Melville Island it always 
appeared in the south, and Parry 
therefore called it the Aurora Aus¬ 
tralis. 

Luminous bands at vast heights, 
are often seen stretching from west 
to the zenith and beyond, and about 
three or four degrees wide. What 
they are is unknown, but they pro¬ 
bably derive their light from the sun 
after it has set to lower regions. 

The ignis fatuus and such other 
luminous meteors are the combus¬ 
tion of phosphureted hydrogen, on 
its ascension into the air, from putrid 
and fermenting vegetation or soils. 
Luminous clouds and the aurora bo¬ 
realis are supposed to be of the same 
nature, the gases in Polar regions 
being evolved by freezing, and burn¬ 
ing in contact with hydrogen in the 
upper atmosphere. 

The stones which fall from the at¬ 
mosphere called aerolites, or aero- 
Iiths, are semi-metallick, and consist 


of— 

Silica 54 

Oxyde of Iron - - 36 

Magnesia 9 

Oxyde of nickel 3 

Sulphur - 2 

Lime 1 

02 


Their specificlc gravity is 3.4. Their 
origin is unknown; the different 
theories being very unsatisfactory. 
If they were projections from the 
moon, as some pretend, they would 
fall only in the tropical regions. 

The records of stones falling in all 
ages and countries, are at least 300 
in number; and some recent in¬ 
stances are perfectly well authentica¬ 
ted. They fall by the explosion of a 
mass which probably acquires in¬ 
crease of heat, as it approaches to 
the earth. The most probable theo¬ 
ry respecting them is, that they are 
independent masses, floating in 
space, and encountered by the earth 
and atmosphere in the annual orbit. 
They fall in all latitudes, and, there¬ 
fore, not from the moon; and their 
substance has a crystalline character, 
regular and sudden, not volcanick. 

The meteorick stones which fell 
at d’Aigle, in France, in 1803, con¬ 
tained as above.—One which fell in 
Yorkshire, consisted of 75 Silica; 48 
Oxyde of Iron, 37 Magnesia, 2 Ox- 

de of Nickel. Lists of 2 or 300 

ave been published by Chladni, 
King, and Howard, which have been 
recorded in different countries. 

Near Baku, in Persia; in some parts 
of Italy ; and in an island in the Le¬ 
vant, there are natural orifices in the 
earth, through which inflammable 
gas passes ; sometimes it takes fire 
on coming into contact with the at¬ 
mosphere, and at other times re¬ 
quires to be lighted like a gas lamp: 
similar gas constantly issues from 
the veins of coal mines, and may be 
lighted and consumed in like man¬ 
ner. 

At Baku, temples for fire worship 
are erected over them; and one of 
them, the priests or devotees allege, 
has been burning for several thou¬ 
sand years, and will continue as a 
miracle till the end of the world. 
They call it the everlasting fire. 

Hanway relates, that the flame 
makes the soil hot, without consum¬ 
ing it, and if made to pass through 
a cane or cone of paper, does not 
consume them, though the - flame 
will boil a pot. The ground is dry 
and stony, and smells like sulphur,, 
and if uncovered, the flame spreads 
to any distance. Brimstone is dug 
as an article of commerce, and naph¬ 
tha springs arise, frequently in jets 







1T4 ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


2 or 3 feet high, which on drying, 
become black, Tike pitch. In Persia, 
they burn it in their lamps, and for 
cooking; and in Russia they use it 
as a medicine. Springs of not wa¬ 
ter likewise arise near Baku. 

The same sort of combustible ex¬ 
halations arise in China, and that 
industrious people use them for pur¬ 
poses of manufactory. 

Between 1666 and 1669, the village 
of Boncourt upon the Eure, contain¬ 
ing 80 houses, was burnt at sundry 
times, by igniting exhalations like 
the ignus fatuus, of a blue colour 
and offensive smell. It was most 
frequent in August and September, 
ana accompanied by clouds of a red 
colour. 

[Wind is "a sensible movement in 
the air over the earth’s surface. It 
has been truly said that the theory 
of winds is one of the least perfect 
parts of natural philosophy. It is 
on facts alone that we must rely for 
more accurate knowledge.] 

In the torrid zone, when moun¬ 
tains do not interfere, the winds fol¬ 
low the sun, and blow constantly in 
the open seas from east to west. 
This tract extends about 25 or 30° 
on each side the equator. 

Below latitude 30°, there is a gene¬ 
ral tendency of the wind to blow 
from the east and south-east. There 
is often noticed an upper current 
blowing contrary to the trade winds. 
Westerly winds prevail from 30 to 
60°. In hot' climates near the sea 
shore, the wind sets from the sea to 
the land during the day, and the con¬ 
trary by night. In the Polar regions 
the winds are more irregular than in 
lower latitudes. Winds increase in 
force with elevation. 

The constant current of the trade 
winds produces other winds to the 
north and south, tending to maintain 
the general equilibrium; and near the 
coast they are varied by the diurnal 
changes of temperature which result 
from the proximity of land; and also 
by mountains. 

In the Indian ocean the trade wind 
instead of blowing from east to west, 
takes opposite currents for six 
months, and at the times of change 
they produce tornados and storms 
by what are called the breaking up 
of the Monsoons, which is the name 


of the six months’ wind. To the 

south of the equator, from 10 to 23°, 
the wind blows constantly from the 
east and south-east; but from 10° 
northward to the equator, north¬ 
west winds blow from October to 
April, and south-west from April to 
October ; and north of the equator 
.to the Tropick of Cancer south-west 
winds prevail from April to October, 
and north-east winds from October 
till April.* 

[The north-west and south-west 
Monsoons, which have been errone¬ 
ously ascribed to the effects of local 
or continental rarefaction, are some¬ 
times found to extend themselves far 
to the eastward of the Asiatick conti¬ 
nent and islands, and even to the 
central portions of the great Pacifick. 
ocean. 

The dry current of the north-east 
Monsoon on approaching the equa¬ 
tor becomes deflected and checked 
in its course, arid after crossing the 
equator returns again to the east¬ 
ward, in the southern latitudes, in 
the form of the wet north-west Mon¬ 
soon. On the other hand the dry 
south-east Monsoon which prevails 
in the opposite season south of the 
equator, becomes deflected in the 
equatorial region in the same man¬ 
ner, and returns to the eastward 
north of the equator in the character 
of the south-west Monsoon. 

In Ceylon, (lat. 8° north) the north¬ 
east Monsoon, with a temperature of 
68° Fahrenheit, has a dryness of 75 
hygrometrick degrees. The opposite 
Monsoon, from the south-west at 82° 
Fahrenheit, is so damp as to indicate 
but 30 degrees.] 

As the winds, over a breadth of 
60 degrees, blow, with slight inter¬ 
ruption, from east to west; so in the. 
northern and southern hemispheres 
the atmospherick equilibrium de¬ 
mands that the prevailing winds 
should be from west to east, and 
therefore, for the most part, wester¬ 
ly winds prevail for two-thirds of the 
year, and they enable ships which 
sail to the West Indies by the trade 
winds to return to the East by 

* The hypothesis of rarefaction, which 
in the English edition was interwoven 
with some of these paragraphs, has been 
omitted. The omission is at least in ac¬ 
cordance with the late practice of the best 
European writers in this branch of natu¬ 
ral philosophy.— Am. Editor. 






ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


First ascending to the latitude of 40 
or 45°. 

[The trade winds, in both hemi¬ 
spheres, on approaching the western 
borders of the great oceans, become 
deflected in their course, and pas¬ 
sing into higher latitudes in the 
form of south-west and north-west 
winds, they become identified with 
the prevailing westerly winds in 
these latitudes. On the eastern bor¬ 
ders of these oceans the air returns 
towards the equator in the form of 
northerly or southerly winds, which 
on crossing their respective parallels 
of 30°, become merged in the east¬ 
erly trades, on both sides the equa¬ 
tor ; the locality, as well as activity, 
of these aerial circuits, being affected 
more or less with the change of sea¬ 
sons. This appears to be the great 
law of circulation in our atmosphere; 
and it is to the physical character 
and course of the winds in different 
portions of these great circuits, that 
the peculiarities of temperature and 
climate which pertain to certain 
countries lying in the same latitudes, 
but on opposite sides of the same 
ocean, is chiefly to be referred; as 
also the remarkable absence or pre¬ 
dominance of rain in certain coun¬ 
tries and latitudes. The Monsoons 
of the Indian seas are but a modifi¬ 
cation of the same system of circu¬ 
lation. Counter circuits are some¬ 
times formed in subordinate basins, 
and in high latitudes; the irregu¬ 
larities usually becoming greater in 
proportion as we recede from the 
equatorial regions.] 

In Great Britain, westerly are to 
easterly winds, as 223 to 140. The 
northwardly are to the southwardly 
as 192 to 173. And the north-east 
are to the south-east, as 74 to 54. 

At London, south-west winds blow 
112 days; north-east 58; north-west 
50; west 53; south-east 32; east 26; 
north 16; and south 18. The mean 
of Great Bntain is 220 westerly, and 
145 easterly. In the torrid zone, the 
winds are constantly north-east on 
the north of the equator, and south¬ 
east on the south side. 

[In the state of Vermont it has been 
noticed that their north-west and 
west winds always begin on the sea 
side. 

In Lower Canada and over the St. 
Lawrence, the reigning wind is the 


_175 

south-west, and next to it the north¬ 
east. Very often the North-west is 
unknown while it blows in Maine 
and Nova Scotia. 

In almost every country, as well 
as in every sea, the wind is more or 
less predominant in a particular di¬ 
rection. 

From the average rate of sailing 
of ships during long voyages through 
various seas, as in the China trade, 
and from other data, it is estimated 
that the average velocity of the wind 
near the surface of the ocean is equal 
to 18 miles an hour throughout the 
year. 

Notwithstanding these general 
and determinate horizontal move¬ 
ments, the equal distribution of the 
atmosphere over the surface of the 
globe, which results from gravitation, 
tends to prevent any very rapid or 
violent motion in any speeifick di¬ 
rection, and consequently to prevent 
violent and destructive winds. But, 
owing to the tendency of all fluid 
matter to run in whirls, or circuits, 
when subject to the influence of un¬ 
equal or opposing forces, a rotative 
movement of unmeasured violence 
is sometimes produced. This pe¬ 
culiar movement which in its most 
active state is sometimes distin- 
uished by the name of tornado or 
urricane, assumes every possible 
variety of position, appearance, velo¬ 
city, and extent; and is the only 
known cause of violent and destruc¬ 
tive winds or tempests. 

The various phenomena and effects 
which result from this cause, are 
usually considered as distinct me¬ 
teors, and are variously named in 
different countries, according to their 
sensible appearances, intensity, ex¬ 
tent, and duration. Such stormy 
meteors are distinguished by the fol¬ 
lowing among other names, which 
are often applied in an indeterminate 
manner and sometimes to the same, 
or modifications of the same pheno¬ 
mena. 

Class 1st. Aerial meteors or'phe¬ 
nomena constituted by ichirls or vio¬ 
lent movements of limited extent. 

Flaw 

Whirl 

Gust 

Rush of wind 

Whirlwind 

Helm, or Helm wind 






176 ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


Spout 

Waterspout 

Sandspout 

Sand Pillar 

Fire Pillar 

Turbo 

'Turbonado 

Tourbillon 

Tornado 

Bursting of a Waterspout 
Falling of a Waterspout 
Bursting of a cloud 
Squall 

Thunderstorm 
Hailstorm 
Sandwind 
Samiel * 

Simoon 

Class 2d. Whirlwind-storms or 
violent movements of greatly in¬ 
creased extent. 

Gale 

Blow 

Storm 

Pampcrro (in La Plata.) 

Norther (Mexico.) 

Hurricane 

Typhoon, or Tau-fung, &c. 

Names of general or periodical 
winds of the nature of currents. 

Trade Wind3 
Monsoons 
Etesian Winds 
Harmattan, &c.} 

Wind is determined by the anemo¬ 
meter, by Lind, Daniel, and others, 
to move with velocity and force > as 


under : 

miles per 

force in lbs. 

Gentle. 

hour. 

.. 4 , 5 -.. 

per square foot. 

.0.079 

Pleasant••• 

• -8.0 - • • 

.0.260 

Brisk gale- • 

-16.0- - - 

.1.107 

High. 

-36.0--- 

.5.208 

Storm. 

-62.0- •• 

.15.625 

Hurricane - • 

-88.0- •• 

.31.25 

Great hurri- 
cane. 

120.0-•• 

.58.0 


A West India hurricane has blown 
heavy cannon out of a battery and 
in exposed situations, walls of solid 
masonry with strong coping, not ex¬ 
ceeding four feet in height, have also 
been destroyed. 

Balloons have travelled 60 miles 
an hour, when the anemometer 
showed but 8 miles. 

The samiel is a hot noxious wind 
which sometimes passes over the 


sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa. 
It moves with the quickness of light¬ 
ning, and passes in narrow currents 
lasting only a few minutes. It occa¬ 
sions instant death to every man or 
beast whn happens to face it, and it 
is said that it so decomposes them 
that their limbs fall asunder. The 
coming of it is indicated by a thick 
haze in the horizon, and travellers, 
if they have time, throw themselves 
on their faces with their feet towards 
it till it has passed. Hewlitt thinks 
that it was a samiel that .destroyed 
the army of Sennacherib. 

The sirocco is a blighting hot 
wind which prevails in Italy, &c., 
about April. 

In 1813, a caravan of 2000 persons 
was buried by a tornado of sand, be¬ 
tween Muscat and Aleppo, only 20 
escaped. 

[The Harmattan is an east wind 
of great dryness, which visits the 
western coast of Africa in the low 
latitudes, in the months of January, 
February, and March. It is proba¬ 
bly the true trade wind, which ordi¬ 
narily does not act in these regions 
as a surface wind, but passes in a 
higher stratum. 

The Helm wind is a violent whirl¬ 
wind, peculiar to the western side of 
the Cross Fell mountain in Cumber¬ 
land ; and it occurs only during an 
easterly wind. Whirlwinds of the 
same character are not uncommon 
in other regions where obstructions 
are presented to the regular wind. 

Whirlwinds of great extent always 
act horizontally, those of small di¬ 
mensions act either horizontally or 
vertically, or at any intermediate 
angle of inclination. Many of this 
smaller class of whirlwinds occur in 
the atmosphere which do not reach 
the surface of the earth, and can 
be recognised only by the sensible 
phenomena which they produce. 
The most obvious of these charac- 
teristicks are, the cloudy pipe or pil¬ 
lar. called the waterspout; thick 
masses of turbulent clouds; thunder 
and lightning ; often repeated or 
continuous thunder, or lightning; a 
continued roar in the atmosphere 
resembling the noise of a loaded 
waggon driven rapidly on frozen 
ground, or in some cases like the 
continued discharge of artillery and 












ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 177 


email arms ; hail of uncommon size 

in acircumscribed locality or running 
in veins ; large drops of rain; a del¬ 
uge of rain falling in a small com¬ 
pass; the falling of sand, ashes, 
small fish, reptiles, and other mat¬ 
ters previously taken from the sur¬ 
face; &c. &c. 

Whirlwinds of whatever form or 
extent, and however active or vio¬ 
lent their revolutions, move forward 
only with the velocity of the more 
regular wind by which they are im¬ 
pelled. 

In clear, calm, and sultry weather, 
whirlwinds have been excited by ex¬ 
tensive fires, burning simultaneously 
in a large circle, and have exhibited 
violent and continued electrick explo¬ 
sions, and the peculiar phenomenon 
of the turbo or whirling pillar, with 
other of the above characteristicks. 

Volcanick eruptions often excite 
whirlwinds of great altitude, and of 
the most violent character. 

Thunder storms are supposed to 
be whirl winds, gyrating, in ordinary 
cases, on a horizontal axis of rota¬ 
tion. Tiie wind which they exhibit 
often blows with a velocity greatly 
exceeding the progress of the thun¬ 
der storm, as is the case with other 
whirlwind storms. 

The presence of warm and humid 
air is supposed to be necessary to the 
production of violent electrical phe¬ 
nomena, such as thunder and light¬ 
ning. The latter phenomenon is 
generally caused by the comming¬ 
ling of air, of different temperature 
and condition. 

Hurricanes are the most violentand 
destructive storms of the Atlantick 
ocean. They are of the whirlwind 
character, and the direction of their 
rotation in the North Atlantick is 
from right to left, horizontally. In 
the latitudes of the West Indies, their 
general course or drift is towards 
the west, inclining, however, gradu¬ 
ally to the northward. About the 
parallel of 30° their progress to the 
westward ceases, and passing into 
higher latitudes they pursue an east¬ 
erly course, on a track nearly par¬ 
allel to the American coast. 

A hurricane which occurred in 
August 1830, has been traced from 
near the windward islands of the 


West Indies to the coast of Florida 
and the Carolinas, and thence to the 
banks of Newfoundland, a distance 
of 3000 miles, which was passed over 
by the storm in about six days. The 
width of the track exposed to the in¬ 
fluence of the storm, in different de¬ 
grees of violence, was from 300 to 
600 miles; and its duration at each 
point from 12 to 24 hours, its greatest 
violence being exhibited in from 6 to 
12 hours. Many other storms have 
been traced in like manner and on a 
corresponding track. 

In the West Indies, hurricanes be¬ 
gin to blow from a northern quarter 
of the horizon, and thence changing 
to the west and round to a southern 
quarter, and then their fury is over. 
These phases however will be found 
somewhat different towards the two 
opposite margins of a storm’s track, 
and also in positions which are shel¬ 
tered in some directions from the ac¬ 
tion of the storm by elevated land. 
On the coast of the United States 
these storms commence blowing 
from an eastern quarter which cor¬ 
responds to the change in their line of 
progress, and exhibiting changes of 
a like character, they terminate with 
fair weather from a western quarter. 

The direction of the wind and the 
progressive changes in great storms, 
are found to accord with the locality 
or position of the storm in the great 
oceanick circuit of wind or atmos- 

lierick current. In the southern 

emisphere the course and changes 
of such storms appear to be counter 
to those in the northern hemisphere. 
Thus storms in the northern latitudes 
in certain circumstances blow first 
from the southeast and then change 
to the north-westj while in New- 
Holland, storms in like circum¬ 
stances blow first from northwest 
and then change to southeast 

Little is known of the direction of 
the wind upon the highest moun¬ 
tains, but in Peru and at the Sand¬ 
wich islands at the height of about 
18000 feet it is found to be fresh from 
the southwest, and on the peak of 
Teneriffe about 10000 feet above the 
sea a strong wind blows from the 
west. 

Volcanick ashes when carried into 
the higher regions of the atmosphere 
are usually wafted to the eastward. 
Upon an eruption of Mount Vesu- 






ATMOSPHERICAL AND AERIAL PHENOMENA. 


178____ 

vius in 1631, a shower of ashes fell 
upon the coast of continental Greece 
and also at 100 leagues distance to¬ 
wards the coast of Syria. On the 
eruption at St. Vincent in 1812, ashes 
were deposited at Barbadoes 60 or 
70 miles eastward, and also on the 
decks of vessels 100 miles still far¬ 
ther east, while the trade wind at the 
surface wa"s blowing in its usual di¬ 
rection. In the same year ashes fell 
upon the deck of a British packet 
bound to Brazil, when distant near¬ 
ly 1000 miles from the nearest land. 

Nearly all the sensible phenome¬ 
na of the atmosphere occur below 
the height of 18000 feet, and gene¬ 
rally much nearer to the earth’s sur¬ 
face. Owing to the retardation of the 
surface winds and to other causes, 
the currents in the lower atmosphere 
run upon each other in horizontal 
strata, which differ much in tempe¬ 
rature and hygrometrical condition 
as well as in the direction and velo¬ 
city of movement. It is to the con¬ 
dition of these strata and their influ¬ 
ence upon each other that the for¬ 
mation of clouds and rain is chiefly 
to be ascribed. 

The wind gocth toward the south, 
and turneth about unto the north ; it 
whirleth about continually , and the 
wind returneth again according to 
his circuits. AU the rivers run into 
the sea ; yet the sea is not full: unto 
the 'place from whence the rivers comc , 
thither they return again. This is. 
probably the best epitome of mete¬ 
orology extant. Whether its com¬ 
prehensive accuracy be partly owing 
to an imperfect translation, it is not 
necessary to inquire.] 

Showers of frogs, fishes, &c. arise 
from water-spouts, or spiral eddies, 
[whirls] by which portions of the 
waves of the sea and ponds of wa¬ 
ter, with their contents, are forced 
to an elevation; and thus being 
transported to a distance, and there 
falling, produce these strange pre¬ 
cipitations. A water spout or whirl¬ 
wind often works spirally like a 
cork-screw, and moves along like an 
eddy in agitated water, till its force 
is scattered, and its contents fall; it 
commonly begins revolving at the 
bottom of a doud which descends 
within it, and from which pillar-like 
appearance the term water spout has 
been derived. 


The thermometer was invented by 
Santorius and Drebelin the 16th cen¬ 
tury. To convert degrees of Reau¬ 
mur into Fahrenheit, you multiply 
by 9, divide by 4, and add 32. But to 
convert Fahrenheit into Reaumur, 
you subtract 32, multiply by 4, and 
divide by 9. 

Fahrenheit, a merchant of Dant- 
zick, invented his thermometer in 
1720. 

Every point of the Mariner’s Com¬ 
pass is = 11£° — or a half 5° 
3 ? 30”, arid a quarter 2° 48' 45”. 

The ordinary pressure of the at¬ 
mosphere, on a square foot, is 2158 
lbs.; on an inch, 15 lbs. equal to 30 
inches of mercury, or 34£ feet of wa¬ 
ter ; for a cubick inch of mercury 
weighs half a pound, and a cubick 
foot of water, 62J pounds. 

The barometer, in the temperate 
zones varies 3 inches from 28 to 31, 
but between the tropicks but \ of an 
inch. 

[In the tropical latitudes the pres¬ 
sure of the atmosphere is nearly 
uniform, the mercury in the barom¬ 
eter standing at about 30 inches 
throughout the year. In higher lati¬ 
tudes the pressure is more variable.] 

Barometers are used to indicate 
the height of mountains, because the 
elasticity diminishes as the aerial 
space enlarges. The rule is as fol¬ 
lows : To "substract the logarithm 
of the number of inches at the top 
from the logarithm of the number of 
inches at the bottom, and the differ¬ 
ence multiplied by 60,000, gives the 
elevation in feet. Then to correct 
this by the variation of the thermo¬ 
meter at the two stations, shift the 
decimal point three places to the left 
and multiply by twice the sum of 
the degrees on the thermometer at 
top ana bottom; add this to the first 
determination, and the sum will be 
the true elevation. For example, in 
the case of Snowdon, the barometer 
at bottom is 30.091, and at top, 
26.439; the difference of their loga¬ 
rithms is 0.5614, which multiplied by 
60,000, gives 3668.4; to correct 
which, 3.37 X by 50.8 as above, = 
171.2 X 3668.4 = 3689.6, the true 
height. 

There is another rule by the pro¬ 
portion of the sum of the two heights 
of the barometer to their difference* 




179 


ATMOSPHERICAL AND 

as 52,000 to the height; thus, in the 
case of Snowdon, as 56.53 is to 3.652, 
so is 52,000 to the height which is to 
be corrected for difference of heat as 
before. The number 52,000 being a 
constant quantity in this ratio. 

The variations in the barometer 
from the expansion of heat, are in 
this climate from the 10th to 20th of 
an inch. The variation depends 
upon the varied elasticity of the air. 
Prom 10 in the morning to 4 in the 
afternoon, between the tropicks, the 
barometer falls : it rises till 10 at 
night, falls till 4 in the morning and 
rises again till 10 in the forenoon, 
in all about-a 500th part of the entire 
elevation. There is much quackery 
in the words usually written on the 
plates of barometers as the changes 
indicated depend on several circum¬ 
stances, besides the elasticity of the 
air. 

Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo, 
having discovered that no principle 
of suction existed, and that water 
did not rise in a pump, owing to na¬ 
ture’s abhorrence of a vacuum, imi¬ 
tated the action of a pump with mer¬ 
cury, and made the first barometer 
in 1643, and Descartes explained the 
phenomena. Suction was, however, 
defended all over Europe, and atoms 
were supposed to be provided with 
hooks, by which both suction and 
attraction were effected. In 1654, 
Otto Guericke, of Magdeberg, made 
the first air pump which opened a 
new field to science, and by the use 
of which, Boyle in England, acquired 
fame. 

The surface of mercury in a baro¬ 
meter in rising is convex, because 
the friction of the central parts of the 
fluid mercury, is less than the fric¬ 
tion of the mercury at the sides next 
the glass; and in falling it is concave 
for the same reason, i. e. the increas¬ 
ed friction between the glass and 
mercury detains the ring next to it. 
The local atmospheres between the 
glass and mercury, are also con¬ 
cerned in this phenomenon. 

If the atmosphere were of equal 
density, the rise of the barometer 
would indicate a rise of five miles, 
but the rise of the barometer depends 
more on the elasticity than the 
density, and, therefore, is not a cri¬ 
terion of the height. 


AERIAL PHENOMENA. 

The greatest depression of tho 
mercury in England has been to 
28.1 inches. 

Barometers rise and fall together 
even at great distances. They fluc¬ 
tuate less at elevations above the 
sea. Northerly winds raise them, 
southerly winds sink them. 

[The fluctuations of the barome¬ 
ter appear to be owing to different 
causes, and may be classed as fol¬ 
lows : 

1st. The regular semi-diurnal va¬ 
riation, which, in the tropical lati¬ 
tudes is at its maximum about 10 
A. M., and at its minimum about 3 
P. M. At New-York it is nearly 
the same, but in very high latitudes 
the effect is reversed, the minimum 
being at 10 and the maximum at 3 
o’clock. It appears to indicate a 
system of atmospherick tides, result¬ 
ing from the rotation of the earth and 
its connexion with the solar system. 

2d. The variation which results from 
the mechanical action of circuitous 
winds and the larger atmospherick 
eddies, which comprise not only the 
storms but a large portion of the 
winds in the higher latitudes. Du¬ 
ring the passage of these eddies or 
storms over the place of observation, 
the barometer sinks while under their 
first or most advanced portions, and 
rises as they pass over or recede. 
The most prominent variations of 
the barometer are of this character. 

3d. The general movement or oscil¬ 
lation of an extensive region of at¬ 
mosphere in the higher latitudes, 
under the alternately predominating 
influence of centrifugal action to¬ 
wards the equator, and gravitation 
towards the poles. These exten¬ 
sive oscillations are infrequent, and 
nearly uniform in their effect on the 
barometer over an extensive region 
of country at nearly the same time. 

The extent of the vibrations of the 
column of mercury between the tro¬ 
picks was .067. 

The highest range in the polar re¬ 
gions observed by Capt. Parry, was 
30.86. During a violent storm or 
hurricane the barometer has some¬ 
times fallen below 28 inches. 

The fall of the barometer has no 
necessary and immediate connexion 
with rain, although storms of wind 
which effect the barometer are often 




ISO_AT MOSPHERICAL AND 

attended by rain. It appears from 
the observations of the Marquis Po- 
leni, that in 1175 instances of falls 
of rain, the barometer sunk only 758 
times, being 645 to 1000. The most 
copious rains sometimes fall during 
an unusual elevation of the barome¬ 
ter. 

The prognostications of rain and 
fair weather which are usually af¬ 
fixed to the scale of the barometer, 
are entitled to no attention, and of¬ 
ten serve to discredit this valuable 
instrument. Changes of weather 
are indicated, not by the actual 
height of the mercury, but by its 
change of height. Violent storms 
of wind are always preceded by a fall 
of the barometer, and one of the most 
general rules is, that when the mer¬ 
cury is very low, high winds may be 
expected.] 

Capillary attraction is an effector 
motion of parts of fluids when the 
general pressure on the mass is in¬ 
terested by any intervening solid. 
Thus in a barometer or pump-bore 
the pressure is taken off in the tube 
or bore, while it con inues on the 
outer surface: if a solid be placed in 
the water the water rises round the 
solid, because the solid intercepts the 
pressure on its own side. If two 
solid plates are brought together, the 
water rises much higher, being pres¬ 
sed upon only through the sides. If 
the plates are closed at the side, as 
in the manner of a tube, the water 
rises in the tube in proportion as the 
bore by its smallness, diminishes 
the downward pressure. If a solid 
of less specifics. gravity than mer¬ 
cury be immersed in mercury, the 
pressure acts more on the solid than 
the mercury, and occasions a de¬ 
pression. If water be placed under 
the receiver of an air pump, it be¬ 
comes vapour, or so much becomes 
vapour, as by its elasticity to sustain 
the remainder as vapour, and hence 
it will rise in a tube nearly as in the 
open air. These effects are impor¬ 
tant, because to them is owing the 
rise of moisture in the tubes of plants 
and all saturation. Viscidity varies 
the ascent, and also density, but in 
general, the diameter of a tube mul¬ 
tiplied by the height is a constant 
quantity. Experimenters find great 
varieties in the results which are oc¬ 
casioned by moisture, for the at- 


AERIAL PHENOMENA. _ _ 

mospheres of similar atoms or bo¬ 
dies combine, and thus, atoms of 
water'in a tube facilitate ascent. 
Two plates, after immersion, sustain 
a plate of water, but if dry, scarcely 
any will rise between them. It is 
this principle of intercepted pressure 
which occasions a plumb line to in¬ 
cline towards a mountain, and boats 
to congregate about a ship, and 
small corks about a bung, but if the 
bung is as dense as the water, and 
floats below the water, the corks are 
not acted upon ; from like cause, 
floating bodies are pressed towards 
the side of a vessel. In a capillary 
tube, one-hundredth of an inch in 
diameter, different experimentalists 
have found water rises in such tube, 
2, 3, 4, and 5 inches, but this depends 
on the length of the tube, because 
the downward pressure from the top 
would be as inversely as the length, 
from the fluid to the top. With a 
tube, one-twenty-fifth of an inch in 
diameter, Martin found that spring 
water rose 1.2; vinegar, 9.5; milk, 
0 8; oil, 0.6 ; rum and brandy, 0.5 ; 

; depending, of course, on the viscid- 
l ness. Philosophers have published 
many theories on these subjects, but 
the labours of Dr. Young are most 
to the purpose. 

When a capillary tube is the 50th 
of an inch, water rises in it 2| inches; 
when the 100th, 5 inches; and when 
the 200th, 10 inches. When two 
plates of glass are placed at an angle 
in water it rises 2§ inches, where the 
plates are the 100th of an inch asun¬ 
der, and 5 inches where the 200th, or 
half the height which it rises, where 
the pressure of the air is closed all 
round, as in a capillary tube. The 
rise in both cases being entirely ow¬ 
ing to the intercepted pressure of the 
atmosphere by the glass, and de¬ 
pending on the angle which the top 
of the tube forms with the water, be¬ 
ing less and less as the bore or angle 
is enlarged. 

Water will not rise between cakes 
of wax or grease, and oil of turpen¬ 
tine rises but one-fourth, but spirits 
of wine rise two-fifths. Mercury 
sinks round glass or any substance 
lighter than itself, and water sinks 
when the tubes are made of lighter 
substances; the experiment in those 
cases, being reversed or at right 
angles to the former. 






ACOUSTICKS. 181 


Common air pumps rarify the air 
from 100 to 300 times, the best from 
2 to 3000 times. 


ACOUSTICKS. 

In air, sound travels from 1130 to 
1142 feet per second. 

The lowest sound which the ear 
can discriminate, is, according to 
some, 12£ undulations in a second, 
and to others, 30; and the most 
acute, rather above 6000, and, ac¬ 
cording to others, 14,000 vibrations 
per second. 

Sound affects particles of dust in 
a sun-beam, cobwebs, and water in 
musical glasses; it shakes small 
pieces of paper off a string in con¬ 
cord. Deaf persons may converse 
through deal rods held between the 
teeth, or held to their throat or 
breast. 

In sound, as in light, the angle of 
incidence is equal to the angle of re¬ 
flection. The laws of catoptricks 
apply to sound. 

Echoes are distinguished when 
the time between delivering a sound 
to its return is more than one- twelfth 
of a second; and as the sound goes 
and returns, so, to the speaker, there 
can be no echo in less than -Li a . 0 } or 
47 feet; and syllables cannot be re¬ 
peated in less than one-seventh of a 
second more, or 161 feet for each 
syllable. 

The report of a gun is heard before 
the word fire, which directs the dis¬ 
charge. 

In water, sound passes at the rate 
of 4708 feet per second. 

A bell does not in water produce a 
tone, but a short noise, like two 
knives struck together. The agita¬ 
tion of the water produces no change. 
In the water, a large bell is heard 
45,000 feet; but in the air, out of the 
water, but 656 feet. 

The fire of the English, on landing 
in Egypt, was distinctly heard 130 
miles on the sea. 

Dr. Jameison says, he heard ev¬ 
ery word of a sermon at the distance 
of two miles. 

Counter-point, or melody with 
narmony, as treble and base, was 

P 


invented by Guido about 1022; and 
the time-table by Frameo, in 1080. 

Pythagoras is said to have invent¬ 
ed harmonick strings, in conse¬ 
quence of hearing four blacksmiths 
working with hammers in harmony, 
whose weights he found to be 6, 8, 
9, and 12; or rather, by squares, as 
as 36, 64, 81, and 144. 

Scotch musick is referred to their 
James I. 

Chanting the Psalms was adopt¬ 
ed by Ambrose, about 350, from the 
Pagan ceremonies of the Romans. 
Church organs were in general use 
in the 10tn century. The shortest 
notes in the middle ages were the 
semibreve and minim, now the 
longest. 

The lyre of the Greeks was the 
harp of the moderns; and the viol, 
and vielle of the middle ages, is the 
modern violin. 

The gamut is so called from gam - 
via, the third letter of the Greek al¬ 
phabet, used by Guido for his lowest 
note. It consists of 20 notes, two 
octaves, and a major sixth. The 
first expressed by capitals, the sec¬ 
ond by small letters, and the rest by 
double small letters; as G, A, B, 
&c., g, a, b, &c., and gg, aa, &c. 
It is now extended to the entire scale 
of five or six octaves. 

In musical compositions there are 
two species of keys, the major and 
minor; the sharps and flats being 
referred to C major or A minor. 

A sharp is half a tone higher: a 
flat half a tone lower. 

Large bells are one-fifteenth of the 
diameter thick, and one-twelfth of 
the height. Bell metal is made of 
copper and tin. Small bells made 
of tin, silver, copper, or gold, give 
sounds in acuteness, as 253,266, 282, 
294, respectively. They were used 
in English churches about 700, and 
for that purpose consecrated with 
peculiar ceremonies: some say bap¬ 
tized, and had proper names given 
them. Popes themselves assisted in 
this absurdity. They were supposed 
to put demons to flight, and were 
rung during eclipses, to drive away 
the dragon which was about to de¬ 
vour the moon ; and which dragon 
the astrologers still recognise, by 
calling the northing node the dra- 






182 


PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 


eon’s head, and the southing node 
the dragon’s tail, to which they as¬ 
cribed potent effects. On St. John’s 
Day, they were rung furiously, to 
put his devils to flight and prevent 
the storms. A Popish council, by 
formal decree, directed that bells 
should be blessed to affright demons 
and witches, avert lightnings and 
whirlwinds, and baffle the spirits of 
the storm; and, for the benefit of 
departed souls, bells were to be toll¬ 
ed ; nine knells given for a man, six 
for a woman, and three for a child; 
a custom which still continues. 
The great bells at Pekin weigh 
120,000 lbs., and there are seven of 
them. The great bell at Moscow is 
70 feet in circumference, and 21 feet 
high, and weighs 444,000 lbs.; that 
at Erfurt weighs 252,000 lbs.; and 
the clapper, 12 feet long, weighs 
1100 lbs. The cathedral, at Ant¬ 
werp, has a musical combination of 
33 bells, the largest seven feet wide 
and eight feet high. 

Church organs are in two parts, 
the main and the little organ before 
the other. The largest pipe ex¬ 
presses the size, as 8, 16, or 32 feet 
organs. That at Ulm is 93 feet high 
and 28 broad; its largest pipes 13 
inches bore, with 16 pair of bellows. 

The organ was invented by one 
Ctesibius, a barber of Alexandria, 
about 100 B. C. 

The organ in the new church, at 
Amsterdam, has 52 whole stops, be¬ 
sides half-stops, and two rows of 
keys for the feet and three for the 
hands; and a set of pipes that imi¬ 
tate a chorus of human voices. 

The Hon. Robert Boyle believed, 
that the sound of a drum, made of 
wolf’s skin, would break another 
made of sheep’s skin; and that a 
harp, strung with fox-gut strings, 
would make hens fly away. His 
philosophical writings, and even 
those of Lord Bacon, abound in su¬ 
perstitions of this kind. 

The bag-pipe, a Celtick musical 
instrument, much used in the High¬ 
lands and Ireland, is composed of a 
leathern bag: connected is a pipe or 
chanter, wjth a reed, and the pas¬ 
sage of the air fromthe bag produces 
the tones. These are all drones, two 
in unison with D on the chanter, 
and a long drone an octave lower. 


M. Kempelon, a Hungarian, lately 
made a speaking machine. It con¬ 
sisted of a reed or glottis—of an air- 
chest with valves, bellows for lungs, 
a mouth and jaws, and nostrils. It 

ronounced most letters perfectly, 

ut D, K, G, and T, imperfectly; and 
even long words and sentences with 
great facility. 

The organ, at Weingarten, has 6» 
stops and 6666 pipes; and that at 
Haerlem has 60. 

The famous Temple organ, in 
London, was erected by competition 
of Schmidt and Harris, two famous 
builders ; and, after long-protracted 
disputes about their merits, the ques¬ 
tion was referred to Mr. Jeffries, af¬ 
terwards Chief Justice, and he de¬ 
cided in favour of Schmidt. 

The pianoforte was invented ih 
London, about 1766, by Zumpi, a 
German. 

The lyre, the harp, the flute, and 
the violin, were known to the Ro¬ 
mans. 

Sounds are more intense as the air 
is denser, and they die away on the- 
exhaustion proceeding under a re¬ 
ceiver. Water is a better conductor 
of sound than air. Wood also is as 
powerful conductor of sound, and so> 
is flannel or riband. Gunpowder 
makes no report under an exhausted 
receiver. Sounds are distinct at 
twice the distance on water that 
they are on land. Sound travels 
about 900 feet for every pulsation of 
a healthy person, at 75 in a minute. 

In the arcticlt regions, persons can 
converse at more than a mile dis¬ 
tant, when the thermometer is be¬ 
low zero. 


PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
[Physical Geography, or natural 
geography, as it is sometimes call¬ 
ed, relates to the principal features 
of the earth’s surface, and comprises 
also a knowledge of the climate, tem¬ 
perature, winds, currents, and other 
natural causes which affect the con¬ 
dition of various parts of the earth 
and its inhabitants. 

The most general view of the 
lobe presents us with the two great 
ivisions of land and sea. 

There is, in fact, only one con¬ 
tinuous fluid surrounding the land, 





__ : PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 

all the gulfs and inland seas being 


183 


branches of this universal ocean; 
but for the sake of convenience, dif¬ 
ferent parts of it have distinct names 
given to them. 

The following are the principal 
seas into which the ocean has been 
divided, as will be clearly under¬ 
stood by referring to the map of the 
world. 

I. The great basin of the Southern 
and Pacifick oceans, the waters of 
which cover nearly half the globe. 
It includes, 

1. The Antarctick Ocean , which 
is comprised between the antarctick 
circle and the south pole. 

2. The Southern Ocean, the bound¬ 
ary of which on one side, is the an¬ 
tarctick circle; on the other, a line 
drawn from Cape Horn to the Cape 
of Good Hope; thence to Van Die- 
man’s Land; and again by the south 
of New Zealand to Cape Horn. 
These two divisions are sometimes 
with propriety called tl\e Great 
Southern Ocean. 

3. The Indian Ocean , lying be¬ 
tween Africa on the west, ana the 

f »eninsula of Malaya with the is- 
ands of Sumatra, Java, &c. and 
New Holland on the east, and 
bounded by Persia and Hindostan 
on the north. The Red Sea or Ara¬ 
bian Gulf, the Persian Gulf, and the 
Bay of Bengal, are all parts of this 
ocean. 

4. The Pacifick Ocean , divided by 
the equator into north and south, 
and enclosed between America on 
the east, and New Holland, the is¬ 
lands of Java and Sumatra, and the 
continent of Asia, on the west. On 
the north it terminates at Behring’s 
strait. The seas of China, Japan, 
Okotsk, &c. form parts of this ocean. 

II. The great Atlantick basin, 
forming a channel between the old 
and new continents. It includes, 

1. The Atlantick Ocean, commenc¬ 
ing in the south, from a line drawn 
from Cape Horn to the Cape of 
Good Hope, and terminated on the 
north by tne arctick circle. It is 
divided into north and south by the 
equator, and its branches are the 
Mediterranean, the North Sea or 
German Ocean, the Baltick, Baffin’s 
Bay, Hudson's Bay, the Gulf of 
Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. 

2. The Arctick Ocean, surrounding 
the North Pole, and bounded by the 


arctick circle, and the northern 
shores of the two continents. The 
White Sea, the Sea of Kara, and the 
Gulf ofObe, are parts of it. 

The ocean is spread over nearly 
seven tenths of the globe; and the 
land and water are very unequally 
distributed between the northern and 
southern hemispheres. The follow¬ 
ing calculation will plainly exhibit 
this fact: 

Considering the whole space 
included in the northern part 
of the torrid zone, as equal 
to 1, the proportion of land is 0.297 
On the same supposition, the 
proportion of land in the 
northern temperate zone is 0.559 
And in the northern icy zone, 0.400 
In the southern part of the tor¬ 
rid zone, the portion of land is 0.312 
In the southern temperate zone,0.075 
In the southern icy zone, nearly 
none. 

In other words, if the quantity of 
land in the northern hemisphere be 
represented by 16, the quantity in 
the southern will be scarcely equal 
to 5- 

The general direction of the land 
in the two continents is entirely dif¬ 
ferent. In America it is from pole 
to pole; in the old world it is from 
south-west to north-east. In both 
continents the direction of the large 
peninsulas is similar, almost all of 
them running towards the south. 
This is the case with South Ameri¬ 
ca, California, Florida, Alaska, and 
Greenland in the new world, and 
in the old with Scandinavia, Spain, 
Italy, Greece, Africa, Arabia, Hin¬ 
dostan, Malaya, Cambodia, Co¬ 
rea, and Kamtschatka. The only 
exceptions are the peninsula of Yu¬ 
catan in Mexico, and that of Jutland 
in the north-west of Europe. The 
two continents differ from each other 
very much in the character of their 
outlines, for while the coast of the 
old world is broken on all sides by 
gulfs, bays, and inland seas, the new 
world has a series of openings on 
its eastern shore only. Of its west¬ 
ern side, the only inlet of any mag¬ 
nitude is the gulf of California. 

Mountains are the most consider¬ 
able elevations of the surface of the 
earth. Mountains are most common¬ 
ly so near to each other, and are dis¬ 
posed in such a manner as to give 
the idea of chains; which term ap- 






184 


PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 


plies to series of mountains, the 
bases of which are continuous. The 
most remarkable of these are long 
connected chains, like the Andes and 
the Chippewan or Rocky moun¬ 
tains, which continue for several 
thousand miles nearly in one direc¬ 
tion, having on both sides inferiour 
ranges, but sending off hardly any 
secondary chains. 

Some mountains are completely 
insulated, that is, are quite remote 
from any chain or group. Volca¬ 
noes are more particularly of this 
kind. 

The character of mountains would 
seem to depend upon the sort of rock 
of which they are composed. Gra¬ 
nite, when exposed, forms lofty and 
rugged elevations; gneiss is much 
less precipitous, and slate commonly 
not at all so. In this respect there 
is a remarkable difference, which 
Humboldt has noticed, between the 
old and new continents. In the 
former, the highest points of the Alps 
consist of granite; but in America 
granite is not found higher than 
11,000 or 12,000 feet above the level 
of the sea, and the newest fioetz; 
trap or whinstone, which in Europe 
appears only in low mountains, or 
at the foot of those of great magni¬ 
tude, covers the tops of the Andes. 
Chimborazo and Antesana are crown¬ 
ed with vast walls of porphyry; and 
basalt, which in the old continent 
has not been observed higher than 
4,300 feet, is on the very summit of 
Pichinca. Other secondary form¬ 
ations, among which may be men¬ 
tioned limestone, are also found at 
greater heights in the new than in 
the old world. 

The following is a table of the 
height of some of the principal moun¬ 
tains on the globe, reckoning from 
the level of the sea.* 


EUROPE. 

Mount Blanc, 

Mount Rosa, 

Jungfrauhorn, 

Wetterhorn, >,£< 

Pass ofGt. St. Bernard, 

Do. of Mount Cenis, 

Do. of the Simplon, 

asr .. 

Monte Corno, (Appenines,) 


Feet. 

15,668 

15,527 

13,730 

12,500 

7,968 

6,778 

6,580 

11,427 

11,275 

9,523 


* For a more complete table, see Part 
n. of the Treasury of Knowledge. 1 


Feet. 

Etna,* in Sicily, 10,870 

Vesuvius, near Naples, 3,932 


ASIA. 

Dhawalagiri, ) Hi u 28,077 

Jewahir, $ Himalaya, 2 5,747 

Monna Roa, (Sandwich Is.) 15,988 


Ophir, (Sumatra,) 13,840 

Egmont, (New Zealand,) 11,430 

Ararat, (Armenia,) 9,600 

Awatsha,* (Kamtschatka,) 9,600 
Lebanon, (Palestine,) 9,600 

AFRICA* 

Geesh, (Abyssinia,) 15,000 

Atlas, (Morocco,) 11,980 

Peak ofTeneriffe,* 12,180 


AMERICA. 

Chimborazo, ) ^ 21,425 

Antesana,* l S 19,136 

Cotopaxi,* [a 18,867 

Pichinca,* J < 15,931 

Popocatepetl,* ) . 17,720 

Izlaccihuatl, > Mexico, 15,705 

Lake of Tobica, > 12,195 

Sillade Caraccas, (Venezuela) 8,633 
Itacolumi, (Brazil,) 5,756 

Mt. Washington, (New Hamp¬ 
shire,) 6,650 

Blue Mountains, (Jamaica,) 7,278 
Mount St. Elias, 17,863 


It is remarkable that in the old 
continent the principal chains of 
mountains contain no volcanoes, 
and that islands, and the extremi¬ 
ties of peninsulas, are alone the 
seats of these convulsions ; while in 
the new world, the immense range 
which runs along the shore of the 
Pacifick Ocean possesses more vol¬ 
canoes than are found in the old con¬ 
tinent and its adjacent islands. 

Professor Jameson has given the 
following estimate of the number of 


volcanoes:— 

Continent of Europe, • • • • 1 

Islands of do. •• 12 

Continent of Asia, •• • • 8 

Islands of do. •• •• 58 

Continent of America, •• •• 97 

Islands of do. •• •• 19 


No volcano has yet been discover¬ 
ed on the continent of Africa, but 
most of its groups of islands are dis¬ 
tinguished by them. 

Several mountains bear evident 
marks of having, at some distant 
period, been the outlet of fares; and 
on this account they are called ex¬ 
tinct volcanoes. 

It has sometimes happened, that 

(Note.) Those marked * are volcanoes. 










PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 


185 


new islands have been formed dur¬ 

ing submarine eruptions. An in¬ 
stance of this kind occurred in 1811, 
in the neighbourhood of St. Michael, 
one of the Azores, which lay about 
800 miles west of Portugal. This 
new island has since disappeared. 
More recently a new island has ap¬ 
peared in the Mediterranean, near 
the island of Sicily, which disap¬ 
peared after the lapse of a few 
months. 

A considerable portion of the is¬ 
lands of the globe, are found to be 
of volcanick origin. 

Many islands, especially those in 
the South Sea, owe their origin to the 
marine insects which produce the 
coral. Some, are banks of sand, 
just raised above the surface of the 
water. 

The bottom of the sea appears to 
have inequalities similar to the sur¬ 
face of the continents; the depth of 
the water is therefore extremely va¬ 
rious. There are vast spaces where 
no bottom has been found ; but this, 
of course, does not prove that the 
sea is bottomless, because the line is 
able to reach but a comparatively 
small depth. If we were to found 
our opinion upon analogy, we might 
conclude that the greatest depth of 
the ocean is equal to the height of 
the loftiest mountains, that is, be¬ 
tween 20,000 and 30,000 feet. 

The level of the sea, if it were not 
for the action of disturbing causes, 
would be the same every where at 
the same instant, and the figure as¬ 
sumed by the ocean would be the 
true surface of the planet, that of 
an oblate spheroid. But the tide at 
any given moment, is at different 
heights in different parts of the 
ocean. 

Water being a bad conductor of 
heat, the temperature of the sea 
changes much less suddenly than 
that of the atmosphere, and is by 
no means subject to such extremes 
as the latter. The temperature of 
the sea never, in any latitude, ex¬ 
ceeds 86 or 87 degrees of Fahren¬ 
heit. 

The existence of banks or shal¬ 
lows have a local effect in diminish¬ 
ing the temperature of the ocean, but 
the great agents in modifying it are 
currents, which mingle together, or 
change the locality, of waters of dif¬ 
ferent regions. Thus the gulfstream, 
P 2 


as it is called, which sets into the 
gulf of Mexico from the equatorial 
regions, is much warmer than the 
neighbouring parts of the sea; the 
current of Chili is just the reverse, 
being in its progress from the higher 
to the equatorial latitudes, from 
whence it passes across the wide 
Pacifick, and carries the warmth 
which is thus acquired, again to the 
higher latitudes, on reaching the 
western borders of that ocean. 

There are three kinds of move¬ 
ments constantly going on in the 
waters of the sea—1. Tne agitations 
which its surface undergoes by the 
action of winds—2. Tides, which are 
the result of the attraction between 
the earth and the sun and moon— 
3. Currents, which arise from differ¬ 
ent causes, some of them existing 
within the element itself. 

The influence of the moon in pro¬ 
ducing the tides, is commonly sup¬ 
posed to be greater than that of the 
sun, and evidently governs the time 
of high water. As the moon crosses 
the meridian of a place about every 
twenty-four hours and fifty minutes, 
the sea, in that space of time, ebbs 
twice and flows twice, in most parts 
of the world. In large portions of 
the Pacifick Ocean, however, as well 
as in certain other localities, the 
tides are exempt from the lunar in¬ 
fluence. At Tanita and the Georgian 
group, near the centre of the Pacifick 
Ocean, the tide rises but one or two 
feet, and it is high water at noon 
and midnight throughout the year, 
and this too, in the very region 
where the established theory would 
lead us to expect the lunar tides to 
be the most regular and powerful. 
The tides upon the coast of Gauti- 
mala, in the Caribbean sea, afford a 
similar exception. These facts serve 
to show that the modus operandi of 
the causes which produce tides, is 
not thoroughly understood. 

The impediments created by shal 
lows in the ocean, and by the shores, 
bays, gulfs, and promontories of 
islands and continents are such, that 
the tides are greatly delayed, altered 
both in degree and direction, and in 
many places so accumulated, that 
they rise to heights far exceeding 
what is witnessed in the open ocean 
On the northern coasts of France, the 
flow being confined in a channel, 
rises to a surprising height; at St. 




186 


PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 


Maloes 50 feet. The tide of the 
German ocean is twelve hours tra¬ 
velling from the mouth of the 
Thames to London bridge, where it 
arrives about the time that there is 
a new tide in the German ocean. 

The tide at Chepstow, rises, at 
high spring tides, 56 feet, and at 
others from 40 to 50. The tides in 
the Bay of Fundy are said to rise 
to an equal height. 

Currents and winds have an influ¬ 
ence either in quickening or retard¬ 
ing the tide, and a powerful wind 
will sometimes keep a tide out of 
very narrow channels. On the con¬ 
trary a strong wind coming from 
the same quarter as the tide, will 
sometimes raise it several feet above 
its usual level. 

Currents in the ocean are either 
constant or occasional. The most 
remarkable currents are those which 
continually follow the same direc¬ 
tion. These usually follow the 
course of the great circuits of wind 
in every ocean, and besides, have a 
general connexion with each other, 
so that much of the oceanick fluid 
is constantly passing from one basin 
to another. 

The waters of the north Atlantick 
perform a constant circuit in the 
parallels between the equator and 
the banks of Newfoundland, of 
which circuit the concentrated cur¬ 
rent of the gulf stream forms a con¬ 
spicuous part, and in thecentre of this 
circuit of current is situated the 
great field of floating sea-weed called 
the grassy sea. Its strength is much 
aided by the current which passes 
from the Indian Ocean round the 
Cape of Good Hope, through the 
south Atlantick, and which, joining 
the equatorial current, passes to the 
northwest into the Caribbean sea. 

In the north Atlantick a counter 
circuit is also formed, which passes 
near the British islands and the 
coast of Norway, and enters the 
polar basin, from whence it returns 
under the name of the polar current, 
and passing down the coasts of 
Greenland and Labrador, carries 
with it, at certain seasons, the float¬ 
ing ice of the polar regions. 

The fruit of trees which belong to 
the American torrid zone is every 
year deposited on the western coasts 
of Ireland and Norway; and on the 
shores of the Hebrides are collected 


seeds of several plants, the growtn 
of Jamaica, Cuba, and the neigh¬ 
bouring continent. The most strik¬ 
ing circumstance, perhaps, is that of 
the wreck of an English vessel, 
burnt near Jamaica, having been 
found on the coast of Scotland. 

It is estimated by Humboldt, that 
a floating body, which should receive 
no impulse from the winds, would 
require thirteen months from the 
Canary islands to reach the coast of 
Caraccas, and ten months to make 
the tour of the Gulf of Mexico, while 
forty or fifty days might be sufficient 
to carry it from the straits of Florida 
to the banks of Newfoundland; and 
requiring between two and three 
ears to perform the whole circuit 
ack to the Canary islands, equal to 
a distance of eleven or twelve thou¬ 
sand miles. 

The general features of the cur¬ 
rents in the north and south Pacifick 
resemble those in the Atlantick, ex¬ 
cept that they are obstructed by nu¬ 
merous archipelagos. A Japanese 
junk, which had been disabled on 
that coast, has recently been drifted 
to the Sandwich islands; and pieces 
of wreck and other articles from the 
China sea, are often found by the 
whale ships in the northern Pacifick. 

The existence of under currents , 
different from those on the surface, 
is highly probable and is supported 
by the analogy of the atmospherick 
currents, which traverse immense dis¬ 
tances in distinct horizontal strata ; 
but their existence is not distinctly 
proved except by the drift of the ice¬ 
bergs, which are brought into the mar¬ 
gin^ of the gulf stream, during the 
spring and summer, by the polar cur¬ 
rent, which then disappears,and from 
its greater density,probably becomes 
an inferiour current, passing to the 
lower latitudes. From the great 
depth of the icebergs, it probably 
continues to act upon them after 
they arrive within the influence of 
the warmer current of the gulf 
stream. 

An under current is also supposed 
to exist in the straits of Gibraltar, 
where there is a constant influx from 
the Atlantick through the strait; as 
the wreck of a vessel which was 
sunk on the Mediterranean side of 
the strait, is said to have risen again 
in the Atlantick. 

It is common to ascribe the cur- 







PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 18t 


rents of the ocean wholly to the ac¬ 
tion of the winds; but, as the waters 
of the ocean are subject to the same 
impulses as the superincumbent 
atmosphere, it is probable that the 
principal movements of both fluids 
nave their origin in the same causes. 

The term Climate , expresses that 
particular combination of temper¬ 
ature and moisture, which exists in 
the atmosphere of any greater or less 
extent of country. 

The following are the principal 
circumstances wdiich determine phy¬ 
sical climate :—1. The power of tne 
sun’s immediate action, which in¬ 
creases in proportion as we approach 
the equator. 2. Elevation of the 
ground above the level of the ocean. 
3. Position with respect to the great 
seas, or rather with respect to the 
great circuits of wind which sweep 
over those seas and the adjacent 
countries. 4. Position and direction 
of chains of mountains. 5. Charac¬ 
ter of the prevalent winds. 

The amount of immediate solar 
heat depends upon the position of 
the sun in the ecliptick, which deter¬ 
mines the length of the day; and 
the direction in which the rays fall 
upon the earth is another important 
consideration. Bouguer calculated 
that out of 10,000 rays falling upon 
the earth’s atmosphere, 8,123 arrive 
at a given point if they come per¬ 
pendicularly ; 7,024 if the angle of 
direction is 50 degrees ; 2,831 if it is 
7 degrees, and only 5 if it is hori¬ 
zontal. 

By increasing our elevation above 
the level of the sea, a rapid decrease 
of temperature will be experienced, 
till we arrive at the point where con¬ 
stant frost prevails. 

The following table from Professor 
Leslie is designed to show the eleva¬ 
tion of the line of perpetual frost in 
different latitudes:— 


Latitude. 

Mean temperature at 
the level of the sea. 

Height of curve of 
congelation. 

0 

84 Fahr. 

15,207 feet. 

10 

82 

14,764 

20 

78 

13,478 

30 

71 

11,484 

40 

62 

9,001 

50 

53 

6,334 

60 

45 

3,818 

70 

38 

1,778 

80 

33 

457 

00 

32 

0 


The temperature of the sea has an 


effect upon the winds which pass 
over it, and this temperature being 
more equable than that of the land, 
tends to equalize the temperature of 
an island or a maritime country.* 
The temperature of the ocean, con¬ 
tiguous to an y country, also depends 
much upon the position of that coun¬ 
try in relation to the great oceanick 
currents. 

It is the character of the prevail¬ 
ing winds which chiefly, and more 
immediately, affect the climate of 
any country situate without the tro- 
picks. The currents of the atmo¬ 
sphere, like those of the ocean, form 
a system of continued circuits, by 
which the accumulated warmth of 
one region is often conveyed to an¬ 
other, and by this means important 
modifications of climate are pro¬ 
duced. 

Mountains also affect climate in 
more ways than one. By causing 
the condensation of aqueous vapour 
they occasion copious rains. They 
also afford shelter from winds; and 
by their position modify or control 
tne currents of the lower atmosphere, 
and sometimes occasion great di¬ 
versities in the climate of countries 
and places near to each other. 

The climate of the United States 
and Canada strongly illustrate the 
influence of these causes. The tro¬ 
pical current or trade wind being de¬ 
flected by the Mexican elevations, 
enters the great basin of the Missis¬ 
sippi and sweeps freely over the ex¬ 
tensive country lying east of the 
Rocky mountains. Here, by change 
of latitude, the diurnal motion of tne 
surface becomes less than that of the 
superincumbent fluid, which there¬ 
fore necessarily assumes the form of 
westerly winds, and passes back to 
the Atlantick, to be in due time again 
merged in the northeasterly trades. 
When this tropical current keeps sole 
possession of the surface, which it 
often does for days together, extra¬ 
ordinary heat prevails, extending 
frequently through the entire basin 
of the St. Lawrence, and sometimes 
raising the thermometer on the bor¬ 
ders of that river, at Montreal, to 98 
degrees of Fahrenheit. But in win¬ 
ter, when the locality of this great 
circuit is changed to a more southern 
region, and when its current is en¬ 
tirely displaced from the surface of 
* See page 175. 




189 - _ PHYSICAL C 

the great interiour plateau by the cold 
winds of the interiour, which come 
down from the Rocky mountains, or 
from high latitudes on a course pa¬ 
rallel to those mountains, this region 
becomes subject to all the rigours of 
a Siberian winter. 

The climate of China bears a close 
resemblance to that of the United 
States, and the continental and 
oceaniek positions of the two coun¬ 
tries are equally analogous. Both 
countries are subject to the extremes 
of heat and cold above most others 
in the same latitudes. 

The character of the polar current, 
and the great quantities of ice which 
it brings to the northeast coast of 
America, is supposed to influence the 
climate of that coast, particularly in 
the spring months. At Newfound¬ 
land, which is in the latitude of Pa¬ 
ris, late in the month of June, 1831, 
the bays and harbours were full of 
ice. 

Owing to the circuitous character 
of most winds, the temperature of 
the wind frequently does not conform 
to the supposed temperature of the 
quarter from which it blows. Thus 
at London, during six weeks of the 
winter of 1831, a north and north¬ 
east wind was accompanied by a 
thaw, and a south and southwest 
wind always by a frost. It should 
be noted that the great circuit-winds 
contain, without the limits of the 
trades, numberless smaller circuits 
and eddies of every variety of dimen¬ 
sions, which account for the various 
and opposite directions and apparent 
instability of the winds in the higher 
latitudes. In the United States these 
irregularities are chiefly confined to 
the surface winds. 

The atmosphere is capable of ab¬ 
sorbing moisture in proportion to its 
temperature, and a current of air 
passing from a colder to a warmer 
region has therefore a constantly 
increasing capacity for moisture. 
This peculiarity necessarily pertains 
to one portion of each of the great 
natural circuits of wind, or atmos- 
pherick current, in both hemispheres. 
The necessary consequence is a great 
scarcity of ram in the regions falling 
unaer this portion of the current, and 
hence those arid deserts which oc¬ 
cupy so large a portion of the other¬ 
wise most fruitful latitudes. 

On examining the map of the 


world, it may be seen that this 

scarcity of rain mostly prevails in 
countries lying upon the eastern bor¬ 
ders of the great oceans, and of their 
atmospherick circuits, and between 
the 18th and 32d parallels of latitude. 
On the western borders of the Atlan- 
tick, in both the Americas, where the 
aerial current is passing from the 
lower to higher latitudes, there are 
abundant supplies of rain. The same 
is true also of China and the eastern 
coast of Africa, and also of the west¬ 
ern shores of the Pacifick generally, 
except as the effect is modified by 
the misplaced counter current of the 
Monsoons. But not so on the east¬ 
ern shores of these oceans, where the 
atmosphere which forms the extra- 
tropical winds, falling in again to¬ 
wards the equator, presents a con¬ 
stant demand for additional moisture, 
and parches and desolates extensive 
regions of country. 

In the atmospherick basin of the 
North Atlantick, we have the most 
striking exhibition of this effect in 
the great African desert of Sahara. 
Continuing our survey on the same 
parallels, we have also the great de¬ 
serts of Lybia, Egypt, and Arabia, 
subject for the most part to the same 
course of the atmospherick currents, 
and exhibiting the same disastrous 
effects. In the basin of the south 
Atlantick we have, on its eastern 
shore, in South Africa, a barren de¬ 
sert, extending across the same lati¬ 
tudes, and spreading from the shore 
to the mountains. Over this region 
prevails a constant southerly wind, 
being that section of the great south¬ 
ern circuit which is pursuing its way 
to the tropicks. On the eastern shore 
of the South Pacifick, in the same 
latitudes, we have also the coast of 
Peru with a corresponding section of 
southerly or circuit wind, a coast 
which is known to be proverbial for 
the total absence of rain. 

In Egypt the surface winds are pe¬ 
riodical, but northerly winds predo¬ 
minate ; the south wind in winter be¬ 
ing the coldest. 

Near the Canary islands, the trade 
wind blows from N.N.W. to N.E., 
the medium direction being N. by E. 

In the most favourable region for 
the trades, in the Pacifick, lat. 12° S., 
Ion. 177° E., the prevailing winds, 
during near four months in the year, 
blow strong from W.N.W.] 






HISTORY AND LAWS OF ENG- 
1,AND. 

The name of England is derived 
from a village near Sleswick, called 
Angle.n, whose population joined 
the first Saxon freebooters. Egbert 
called his kingdom Anglesland. An¬ 
glesey means England’s Island, ey 
in Saxon being island. 

The Anglo-Saxons came from the 
district watered by the Weser and 
Elbe. It was inhabited by the Sax¬ 
ons and Angles. The Saxons had 
a nobility called Thanes, or Eolder- 
men and Eorls, and there were 
greater and less Thanes. The peo¬ 
ple were yeomen, or independent 
farmers; while the mass of the com¬ 
mons were slaves, being bought and 
sold with the land, and treated like 
the modern negroes. The wittin- 
age-mot was a sort of annual parlia¬ 
ment, for public purposes. There 
was also a shire-mot twice a year, 
in which our assizes originated; and 
a wapontakor hundred-mot. Below 
all, a tithing of 10 families. 

The Celts were the ancestors of 
the Britons and modern Welsh, 
Highlanders, and the northern Irish. 
Of their origin nothing is known; 
but they were a distinct race from 
the Goths or Scythians, in language, 
religion, customs, and person. Their 
druids had a great affinity to the 
modern Bramins in ceremonies and 
faith. The Welsh Archeology men¬ 
tions the coming of Prydain and his 
three sons from Gaul; but it seems 
probable that, at a remote period, 
the countries were united. May not 
the Celts have been colonies from 
Atalantis, mixed subsequently with 
Phoenicians, Gauls, and Carthagi¬ 
nians 7 

The Celts, or Cimbri, were the 
first inhabitants of Britain, and the 
Welsh are their descendants. The 
Goths, or Scythians, drove them 
into their mountains, and the Welsh 
call themselves Cymri or Coomry. 
The Highlanders and northern Irish 
are the same people; but the southern 
and western Irish are from Gallicia 
and Carthage, and their language is 
the same as the Punic. Whitehurst 
tonceives that Ireland was a portion 
of the ancient Atalantis. The reli¬ 
gion of the druids, in many of its de¬ 
tails, resembles that of the Hindoos; 
but the Gauls, or Gallicians of Ire- 


>RV, &c._189 

land and the Highlands, were fire- 
worshippers, and perform ceremo¬ 
nies to Baal, or the Sun, to this day. 

Colonel Wilford found, in the 
books in the Sanscrit, accounts of 
the White Island, and it is referred 
to as the residence of Vishnu ; and 
he publishes another tract, descrip¬ 
tive of what is called the Churning 
of the Sea, such an event as would 
form the basaltick columns in the 
north, and as, perhaps, absorbed 
Atalantis .—Asiatick Researches. 

The earliest records of the histo¬ 
ries of this island are the manu¬ 
scripts and poetry of the Cam¬ 
brians, who were the aboriginal 
inhabitants, corroborated by their 
monuments, consisting of stone 
erections of temples and*altars of 
worship, as Stonehenge, Aubury, 
and various cromlechs; and also 
baiTows, or tumuli, for burying the 
dead, often large and extensive. 

These manuscripts show, and the 
monuments confirm, that, in a very 
remote age, a people on the Euxine, 
called Cyrnry, or Kimri, were con¬ 
ducted to Britain by Hu, called the 
Mighty; and that his son, Prydain, 
established laws and a government, 
and gave his name to the country. 

Previously the country was cover¬ 
ed with forests, like America at pre¬ 
sent, and inhabited by bears, wolves, 
wild boars, foxes, (leer, and other 
wild animals. 

The language of the first settlers 
was the same as that spoken in 
Wales at this day, of which the 
Irish, and Erse of the Scotch high¬ 
lands, are dialects, similar to ttie 
Phoenician and Carthaginian, with 
many Greek words; and the religion 
was the worship of the sun and fire, 
such as prevails in the countries 
near the Euxine. 

The simplicity, perfection, and co¬ 
piousness of the Welsh language, the 
altars still found in Ireland dedicated 
to Baal or the sun, the custom in 
Ireland and the Highlands of pass¬ 
ing through fires at Midsummer, 
practised even to this day, just as 
among ancient eastern nations, are 
confirmations. 

That Britain formerly joined the 
continent has been inferred from the 
similar cliffs of the opposite coasts, 
of the English channel, and from the 









190 


HISTORY, &c. 


constant encroachments of the sea 
in still widening the channel. 

The descendants of Hu and Pry- 
dain maintained the government, ac¬ 
cording to some writers, till the ar¬ 
rival of some bands of fugitive Tro¬ 
jans, about'the years 1100 or 1200 
before Christ, under Brutus, who, 
landing at Totness, established a 
government; and, at his death left 
England to his son Leucrine; 
Wales, to his son Kamber; and 
Scotland, to his son Albactanus. 

This account seems, at first, to 
have been published by one Geoffrey, 
a historian, of Monmouth, from an 
ancient manuscript, said to be 
brought from Armorica, or Brittany, 
a colony from Britain. And it was 
confirmed by others, believed by 
Shakspeare, who founded on it his 
tragedy of Lear , one of the kings 
descended from Brutus, by Raleign, 
and by Milton ; also by Henry VII., 
who published his pedigree in a di-. 
rect line from Brutus, in proof of his 
title to the throne. 

In 55, before Christ, Britain was 
invaded in Kent by Julius Caesar, 
who, after marching beyond the 
Thames, and building Dover Castle, 
withdrew the Romans; but, in 43 
after Christ, the Romans invaded it 
again, and conquered the whole 
island, except the mountainous parts 
of Wales and Scotland. 

Britain at that time, according to 
Caesar, who wrote as an enemy, 
was semi-barbarousbut it appears 
that they had war-chariots and 
arms, and fought with discipline 
and bravery, and had a body of 
priests, called druids and bards, 
by whom they were chiefly govern¬ 
ed in 17 states or principalities. 

Caesar alleged they had assisted 
the Gauls, with whom he had been 
at war; but the Welsh chronicles re¬ 
late, that the British Prince Caswal- 
lawn had landed in Gaul, and put 
6000 Romans to death, in recovering 
a princess, named Flur, from Caesar, 
to whom he was betrothed. 

Claudius, 100 years after, renewed 
the invasion, partly to employ the 
turbulent Roman soldiery, and part¬ 
ly owing to the treachery of a British 
Prince Avarwy, son of Lludd, who 
invited and assisted the Romans. 


About the commencement of the 

Christian era, the language of the 
whole Island was probably Celtic, 
or that now spoken and written in 
Wales. In the north of Scotland 
lived a tribe of Norwegian settlers, 
who, continuing to paint their bodies 
after the fashion had ceased in the 
south, were, by the Romans, called 
Picti. The western islands and 
mountains of Scotland were peopled 
by a brave and high-spirited race 
from Ireland; but the Lowlands 
were occupied by a mongrel race of 
Scandinavians, Germans, run-away 
Britons, and others constituting the 
Scots , needy, greedy, and glad to re¬ 
ceive aid in their marauding excur¬ 
sions, from the hardy and barbarous 
Piets, who, it is stated by St. Je¬ 
rome, were cannibals. Three hun¬ 
dred years before, Ireland had given 
them a king of the name of Fergus ; 
but their savage annals exhibit little 
but a succession of assassinations 
and slaughters. 

The Britons, or Cymri, occupied 
England and Wales, under the 
names of Leogria and Cambria. 
And Ireland was peopled by a race 
who worshipped Baal, or the Sun, 
and who spoke the language of the 
Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the 
same that is spoken in the High¬ 
lands in Scotland, and there called 
Erse or Irish. 

Even in these early ages, the 
Phoenicians and other Mediterranean 
traders visited Britain for tin, and 
this metal first gave them an im¬ 
portance to the ancient world. But 
it seems to be agreed, as a general 
fact, that when the Trojans were 
dispersed, on the taking of their city, 
they colonized in other places, and 
one Brutus, a Trojan Prince, landed 
with a fleet of adventurers at 
Totness, in Devonshire, about th© 
year 1100 B. C. It is then alleged 
that he conquered the country, and 
left it to a dynasty, who governed 
it in different states till the Roman 
conquest. Shakspeare’s Lear was 
one of these kings; Lud, who found¬ 
ed London, is said to be another; 
and, it is alleged that Brennus, who 
took and sacked Rome, at the head 
of a Gaulish army, in 385 B. C., was 
a British prince of this family. 

The Irish claim descent from a 
colony from Caucasus and Iberia, 







HISTORY, &c. i 9 i 


who first settled in Gallicia, and fled 
to Ireland, to escape conquest by 
Sesostris. Their language is Phoe¬ 
nician and Carthaginian, and they 
were worshippers of Baal. 

When Henry VII. had availed 
himself of the unpopularity of Rich¬ 
ard III. to usurp the sovereignty, he 
employed a commission of learned 
Cambrians to prove his grand¬ 
father’s (Owen Tudor ap Meredith) 
pedigree. This they effected through 
100 generations, up to Brute the Tro- 
an King of Britain. First they traced 
rim to Fychan, Chief-Justice, to 
Prince Lewelyn, and thence to Coel, 
King of Britain; whose line they 
traced to Rhegaw, daughter of Lear, 
and wife of Duke Henwin; and ten 
other steps carried Henry back to 
Brutus, whose name, say they, caus¬ 
ed the country to be called Britain. 
His three sons—Leucrine had Loe- 
gria, now England; Kamber had 
Kambria, now Wales; and Albacta- 
nus had Albania, now Scotland. 
They also proved that, in the 30th 
degree, he was, on his mother’s side, 
directly descended from Ruthven, or 
Vortigern. 

The druids of Wales were the 
priests, administrators of justice, 
poets, and instructers of the people. 
The 4)ards were the poets, and the 
most learned among the druids. The 
Romans and other intruders perse¬ 
cuted them, owing to their great in¬ 
fluence over the people. Their col¬ 
leges were called Bancor, and the 
youth of Gaul received education at 
them. They met annually, in a sort 
of parliament, at Abury, Cam Bre, 
Stanton-Drew or Druid, Lanidan, in 
Anglesey, &c.; and latterly at Caer 
Emrys, or Stonehenge, built by Am- 
brosius, about 460, on the site of a 
previous circle. They were fine 
poets and moralists, but theii ideas 
of causation were superstitious, and 
they believed in elves, demons, 
charms, &c. Their moral maxims 
are equalled by none that ever were 
composed, and were expressed in 
triads for ease of memory. Their 
chief poets were Aneurin, Taliesin, 
and Mcrdynn, or Merlin; and many 
of their productions have high 
classical merit. The most noted 
bards were Plenydd, Alawn, and 
Gwron ; and Britain was the source 
and head of the system. Its ulti¬ 


mate objects were to reform morals 
and customs, to secure peace, and to 
exalt virtue. They had three orders 
—presiding bards, orators or poets, 
and druids or instructers. 

St. Pelagius was a Cambrian of 
the name of Morgan, and his heresy 
arose from his mixing some of the 
tenets of druidism with christianism. 

Ban, in Welsh, signified high, and 
cor, a circle or choir. Hence, Stone¬ 
henge was called Cor Gawr by the 
Welsh, (or stone-hung, or hanging 
stones by the Saxons,) and Bancor, 
or Bangor, was the generic name for 
a principal church, and they had 8 
or 9. 

While the Romans governed, La¬ 
tin was the language of the towns 
of religion, law, and authority; and 
hence, when the Romans retired, it 
retained its ascendancy over the dia¬ 
lects of the nations abandoned. 

It is curious that the Welsh Triads 
mention that Gavran went to sea in 
search of Gwerddonau Llion, the 
Green Islands of the sea, in accord¬ 
ance with a popular tradition that a 
Welsh Prince did sail on a voyage of 
discovery in an early age. 

By the Briton’s Triads, Caer-leon- 
upon-Usk, Caer-Llundain in Lloeger, 
and Caer-evrawg in Deivr, (York), 
were then the principal cities. The 
last, they say, was founded by Ev- 
rawg Gadarn, the 6th King of Bri¬ 
tain. 

The Triads mention Gwidiva, the 
son of Don, as a great astrologer, 
such as Woden was of the Don, and 
this character is there assigned to 
that god of the Saxons. In another 
he is described as a man of illusion, 
and classed with Menew, the son of 
the three Cries, or Vedas, and with 
Rhudd Lwm, a giant. 

The preservation and publication 
of the Cambrian records of British 
history was effected at the sole ex¬ 
pense of Owen Jones, a plain furrier 
of Thames-street and edited by Dr. 
Owen Pugh. 

In the sixth century the district of 
Gwaelod, between Merioneth and 
Cardiganshire, containing 16 towns, 
and the harbour of Gwythns was 
overwhelmed in a storm, owing to 
neglect in preserving the ancient em¬ 
bankments of stone, which had been 








192 


HISTORY, &c. 


erected in consequence of former ex¬ 
tensive encroachments on the same 
coast. 

Armorica was granted, in 384, to 
Canon by Maximim, for aid against 
Gratianus. Cadwallader fled there, 
and afterwards to Rome, where he 
became a monk in 680. 

The British lady Claudia, to whom 
Martial addressed two or three of his 
Epigrams, with others to Linus and 
Pudens, is supposed to be theveiy 
Claudia mentioned with Pudens and 
Linus, in Paul’s second Epistle to 
Timothy. She is believed, by Cam¬ 
brian writers, to be of the family of 
Caractaeus, and, perhaps the first 
British Christian. In 51, Caractaeus 
was taken to Rome ; in 62, Paul was 
at Rome; and, in 67, murdered by 
Nero; and, in 90, Martial died at 75. 
Her Cambrian name, as translated, 
would be Gladys Ruffy th, for Martial 
addresses her husband as Pudens, 
and Rufins, on their marriage; and 
he also addresses two or three of his 
epigrams to Linus, proving the con¬ 
nexion of the three, all of whom are 
mentioned by Paul as his friends. 
No proof more strong can be adduced 
than these, of the verity of Paul’s 
letters, while the identification of this 
beautiful Briton, as an early Christian 
connected with Paul, is a most curi¬ 
ous fact. 

The Britons had annual meetings 
at Abury and Stonehenge, where laws 
were made, and justice administered, 
and heinous crimes punished, by 
burning in wicker-baskets. The Sax¬ 
ons had similar meetings of the Mi- 
chel-synoth , or the Michel-gemote, or 
great council; and wittena-gemote, 
or meeting of wise men. 

The name Caledonia is believed to 
be derived from Gael, or Gael-men, 
or Gadel-doine, corrupted by the Ro¬ 
mans. 

The Grampian Hills are famous for 
a battle between the Scots and Piets, 
under Galgacus and Agricola, in 
which the former were defeated with 
the loss of 100,000 men. 

The spot in Anglesea, where Sue¬ 
tonius and his barbarous legions 
butchered the unoffending Druids, is 
still shown at a ferry called Portha- 
mel, across the Menai Straits. 

The success of Arthur, a British 
prince, against the Saxons in 12 


pitch-battles, is recorded by Hennias, 

Gildas, and others; independent of 
Geoffry, of Monmouth, and the ro¬ 
mance wri ters. He is also mentioned 
in Ossian, as an ally of Fingal. He 
flourished between 508 and 540. In 
1189, Henry II. found his body, and 
that of his queen (Gueniver) at Glas¬ 
tonbury. He appeared to nave been 
of large stature, and ten wounds were 
traced in his head, one of which 
seemed to have killed him. 

The ancient Britons shaved the 
chin—the Saxons wore beards. The 
Normans shaved close. From 1200 
to 1600, beards were generally worn 
through Europe. The Greek church 
clergy wear beards; and Romish 
clergy shave their chins, and part of 
their heads. 

Hunting and fighting were the busi¬ 
ness of the Thanes and Ceorles. 
Every freeman was a soldier, and the 
working classes were slaves under 
the Saxons. 

The Saxons were so called from 
their battle-axes, or seaxis. 

The English peasantry were so 
commonly sold for slaves in Saxon 
and Norman times, that children 
were sold in Bristol-market, like cat¬ 
tle, for exportation. Many were sent 
to Ireland, and others to Scotland. 

The British laws were translated 
into Saxon in 590. Alfred compiled 
the Saxon common law in 885. Ed¬ 
ward the Confessor, promulgated his 
laws, 1065. Stephen’s charter of 
general liberties, 1136. Henry the 
Second’s confirmation, 1154 and 
1175. Magna Charta, by John, 1215. 
Confirmations, by Henry III., in 
1216,1224, 1237, 1250, and 1264. Fo¬ 
rest charter, 1225. By Edw. I., 1297 
and 1299. By Edw. III., in 1345 and 
1368. 

Edmund Ironside and Canute set¬ 
tled their quarrels as all kings ought. 
They met to fight in single combat 
in the Isle of Alney, near Gloucester, 
and, after a few blows, they shook 
hands and agreed to divide the sub¬ 
ject of contest, (the kingdom of Eng¬ 
land), Edmund taking the south, and 
Canute the north. 

The cryer’s u O yes ! O yes!” is a 
corruption of the French “ Oyez,” 
listen. And the attendants on the 
King’s Buffet are called Beef-eaters. 
So the White-point, Blanc-nez. is 






called Blackness. And the gates of 

Boulogne are called the Bull and 
Mouth and the Bull and Gate ; while 
the handsome savage, Belle Sauvage, 
is converted into the Bell and Sa¬ 
vage; the French Needle and 'Vhread 
is vulgarly called the Eagle and 
Child (L’aiguelle et fils.) 

The different tribes of Saxon inva¬ 
ders divided England into seven dis¬ 
tinct governments or kingdoms, call¬ 
ed the Heptarchy; between which, 
wars prevailed for three centuries, till 
Egbert, of Wessex, in default of issue, 
united the whole in 827. These king¬ 
doms were Kent, the South, the 
West, and the East Saxons, North¬ 
umbria, the East Angles, and Mercia. 
Kent, the first, was established by 
Hengist in 455 ; and Mercia, the se¬ 
venth, and the Midland Counties, 
about 585. Hence, the heptarchy 
lasted about 243 years, and the king¬ 
dom of Kent 372 years. 

Previous to the conquest, the crown 
of England had long been held by 
a priest-ridden, superstitious, weak 
prince, Edward the Confessor ; bro¬ 
ther and successor of Edmund Iron¬ 
side. Edward had no children ; and 
Edward, a son of Edmund, his ne¬ 
phew and heir-apparent, died in his 
old age, leaving a son Edgar, under 
age ; while two turbulent sons of his 
sisters, Harold and Tosti, were all- 
powerful. He made a will in favour 
of William, Duke of Normandy, 
whom he had entertained a few years 
before at his court. Harold setting 
aside Edgar, Edmund’s son, seized 
the crown, and hence a division in 
the country facilitated the conquest 
by William. Henry I., grandson of 
William, afterwards married a grand¬ 
daughter of the superseded Edgar, for 
the purpose of reconciling claims. 

William the Conqueror was se¬ 
venth in descent from Rollo, the 
Danish pirate. 

The Bayeux tapestry, wrought by 
Matilda, wife of William the First, 
representing the circumstances at¬ 
tending the invasion of England, is 
214 feet long, and 19 inches wide, 
divided into compartments, repre¬ 
senting the train of events from the 
signature of the will of tire besotted 
Confessor, down to the crowning of 
William. This very curious relic is 
now preserved in the Royal Library, 
at Paris. 

a 


HISTORY, &c. 


m 


Kings and Queens since the Conquest 
Kings and 
Queens. 


Born 


William I. 
Will. Rufus 
Henry I. 
Stephen 

Henry II. 
Richard I. 
John 

Henry III. 
Edward I. 
Edward II. 
Edw. III. 
Richard II. 

Henry TvT 
Henry V. 
Henry VI. 


Edward IV. 
Edward V. 
Richard III. 


Henry VII. 
Hen. VIII. 
Edward VI. 
Vary I. 
Elizabeth 


James I. 
Charles I. 
Charles II. 
James II. 


Mary II. 
William IH. 
Anne 


George I. 
George II. 
George III. 
George IV. 
William IV. 


1027 

1057 

1068 

1105 

1133 

1156 

1165 

1207 

1239 

1234 

1312 

1366 

1367 
1389 
1421 

1442 

1471 

1443 

1456 

1492 

1537 

1516 

1533 

1566 

1600 

1630 

1633 

1662 

1650 

1665 

1660 

1683 

1738 

1762 

1764 


Began I Reigned, 
their Reign. I Y. M. D. 


* 


1066 Oct. 14120 10 26 


1087 £ept. 9 
1100 Aug. 2 
1135 Dec. 1 


1154 Oct. 25 
1189 July 6 
1199 April 6 


121024 
35 3 29 
18 10 24 


1216 Oct. 19 56 


1272 Nov. 16 
1307 July 7 
1327 Jan. 25 
1377 June 21 


1399 8ep. 29 
1413 Mar. 20 
1422 Aug. 31 


1461 Mar. 4 
1483 April 9 
1483 June 22 


8 11 
0 0 
613 
028 
721, 

6 18|43 

4 27! 65 
3 8 33 
'5 20 46 
T 11 33 
6 4 49 


1 5 

215 


2 0,42 


1509 Apr. 22 
1547 Jan. 28 
1553 July 6 
1558 Nor. 17 


1485 Aug. 22 23 8 0 52 
37 9 6 55 
6 5 8|15 
5 4 11142 
44 4 7 69 

22 0 3 58 
2310 3! 48 
36 0 7154 
4 0 7167 
510 15132 
13 0 23 52 
12 4 2C49 


1603 Mar. 24 
1625 Mar. 27 
1649 Jan. 1.0 
1685 Feb. 6 


1689 Feb. 13 
1689 Feb. 13 
1702 Mar. 8 


1714 Aug. 1 
1727 June 11 
1760 Oct. 25 
1820 Jan. 29 
18J0 June 26 



The Normans, or north-men, from 
whom our English nobility claim de¬ 
scent, were northern pirates, who, 
about the middle of the 9th century, 
infested the coasts of England and 
the English channel, and at length 
made landing in Neustria, and 
wasted the country, three times be¬ 
sieging Paris. At length, Charles 
the Simple, in 912, entered into a 
treaty with Rollo, their chief, giving 
him his daughter in marriage, and 
settling upon him the province then 
first called Normandy, with the title 
of duke, requiring him to do homage 
for it. Rollo was then baptized by 
the name of Robert, but known to 
the Normans as Haro, or Ha-Row. 
He was succeeded by his son, Rich 
ard I.; he by Richard II.; he by Ro¬ 
bert II., who, by Herleve, or Herlot, 
a mistress, had the bastard William, 
who conquered England. 

During the Roman conquests, 
Spaniards and Lt itanians fled to 
Ireland, and Gauls and Belgians to 






























HISTORY, &c. 


194 

Britain; hence, there was always a 
foreign mixture with^ the natives, 
and, to this asylum, afforded to fugi¬ 
tives, is to be ascribed the subse¬ 
quent Roman invasion. 

The Doomsday-book, or register 
of the lands of the kingdom, was 
made by five justices, between 1081 
and 1080, and is still preserved in the 
Exchequer. 

Our ancient kings used to keep 
jcuglers, or minstrels and then jest¬ 
ers, under the Tudors; and James 
I. converted them into poet-lau¬ 
reates. 

Magna Charta provides that fines 
or amercements shall never destroy 
a man, and, therefore, all such are 
unlawful. It saves a freeholder’s 
estate, a merchant’s merchandise, a 
scholar’s books, a workman’s tools, 
&c. 

By Magna Charta 10iZ. was fixed 
as the price per day of a cart with 
two horses, and Is. 2d. with three. 

Parliaments were fixed by the 14th 
chapter of Magna Charta, by a 
pledge to summon archbishops, 
bishops, abbots, earls, and great 
barons, and, by the sheriffs, all who 
held a fief; after 40 days’ notice, 
which was to express the cause; 
and, by chapter 13, it is provided 
that no scutage or aid shall be im¬ 
posed, unless by this common coun¬ 
cil of the kingdom. 

The barons, or tenants in chief, or 
freeholders, by doomsday-book, were 
700; but, being split into small parts, 
were greater and. lesser, all of whom 
were entitled to sit in parliament: 
but, in 1307, the latter, or lesser 
barons, were allowed to choose two 
representatives; hence called knigh ts 
of the shire. 

Common law is the unwritten law 
of the country, founded on custom, 
usage, and maxims derived from 
common sense; but is varied by 
written, printed, or statute law, made 
for the purpose of correcting and de¬ 
fining common law. 

Adrian IV. permitted Henry IT. to 
invade Ireland, on condition that he 
compelled every Irish family to pay 
a carolus to the Holy See, and held 
it as a fief of the church. 

England was under an interdict 
from 1207 to 1214. Archbishop Lang- 


ton absolved King John, on pro¬ 

mise that he should restore the char¬ 
ter of Henry I. ; and John after¬ 
wards yielded his kingdom twice to 
the Pope. In 1215, the barons took 
the field at Stamford, under Robert 
Fitzwalter, Baron of Dunmow, and 
all deserting John, he met them on 
June 15, at Runnemede, a meadow 
between Staines and Windsor, when 
the great seal was affixed to the 
charter, and 25 barons were elected 
to secure its fulfilment, and they were 
put in possession of the Tower of 
London. Twelve knights were also 
appointed to rectify the forest laws. 
John was so indignant, that he died 
in October, at Newark, as was said 
by poison, or of a broken-heart. His 
son, Henry III., afterwards confirm¬ 
ed them in 1236 and in 1253, in 
Westminster-hall, with great solem¬ 
nity. Edward I. did the same, be¬ 
fore he could obtain supplies or ser¬ 
vice. There were, therefore, five 
charters—one of John, three of 
Henry, and one of Edward I., the 
same in spirit, but slightly varied in 
expression. 

No accusation of crime can be 
lawfully made by the laws of Eng¬ 
land, except before a grand jury, 
sworn to secrecy; and 12 must de¬ 
cide that it is true, before the party 
can be required to answer. 

Verdicts of juries must be unani¬ 
mous, that every one may be re¬ 
sponsible to his own conscience and 
to the parties, and that the decision 
may be considered as a certainty, 
not probability. 

No English judge can pass a sen¬ 
tence greater than the law pre¬ 
scribes ; but he may diminish the 
extreme severity of the law, as the 
case requires. 

Proof of guilt lies with the accuser, 
and the accused is not expected to 
prove a negative. Proof also should 
be positive, and not presumptive. 
All doubts are construed favourably 
to the accused ; and the opinions of 
a judge ought to have no weight 
with a jury every one of whom ought 
to think for himself and decide for 
himself. 

Petty juries are special for civil 
cases or for trials of treason, or poli¬ 
tical offences, and consist of free¬ 
holders or leaseholders of certain 




__ HISTORY, &c. 

estate; or commons of smaller estate, 

for civil or criminal cases. Their 


verdict should be matter of certainty , 
not probability or possibility; and, of 
this certainty, every one of the twelve 
is bound to be satisfied before he 
consents to the verdict, which is the 
sole and entire affair of the jury, 
whatever may be the declared opi¬ 
nion or apparent wishes of the 
judge or court. All proof of guilt 
rests with the prosecution ; and guilt 
is not to be inferred if innocency is 
not proved, for that is often impossi¬ 
ble, and never required ; while it is 
of far less consequence that even 99 
guilty escape the vengeance of the 
law, than that one innocent man 
should suffer by a hasty and errone¬ 
ous verdict; for, after the verdict of 
the jury, the law assumes the guilt 
as matter of certainty, and does not 
libel the jury by a sentence qualified 
by any doubt of guilt. The jury are 
also judges of the criminal intention, 
as well as of the fact; and they must 
be satisfied with proof of both before 
they assent to a verdict, which de¬ 
cides both on the fact and the crimi¬ 
nal purpose. 

Prothonotories are officers for re¬ 
cording the proceedings or decisions 
of courts of law. 

A solicitor is properly only an at¬ 
torney, who conducts suits in equity. 

The Posse Commitatus is the 
whole male population, called out by 
the sheriff or two justices; and all 
not attending are liable to be im¬ 
prisoned. 

The court of Piepoudre is formed 
at all fairs, by the steward, for sum¬ 
mary redress of wrongs in the fair. 

The king’s tribute, or relief, by 
William 1., was, for an earl, 8 war- 
horses, saddled and bridled, 4 hun¬ 
ters, and 1 palfrey, with armour and 
weapons. A baron pa4d half; a va¬ 
vasor, or squire, his best horse and 
complete armour; a farmer, his best 
beast; and tenants, a year’s rent. 

Magna Charta was a charter for 
the nobles, extorted from King John; 
and extended to the people by the 
petition of right conceded by Charles 
1., and by the bill of rights, 1688. 

The original of Magna Charta, 
preserved in the British Museum, is 
14£ inches broad, and 20§ long. An¬ 
other copy is 17 by 21. 


_195 

Fee-farm-rent is a composition 
paid by a whole borough, or town, 
to the lord, in lieu of individual 
claims; and this arrangement pro¬ 
duced free boroughs and their repre* 
sentation. Middlesex pays to this 
day, by the sheriffs, a fee-farm-rent 
of 300Z. per annum. 

A Heriot comes from the Saxon 
H.regeat, tribute of weapons. 

Titles, customs, &c. in law, are 
immemorial, even before Edward II., 
or 1340. 

By the custom of gavel-kind, in 
parts of Kent, an estate is divided 
among all the sons; and that of an 
intestate brother, among his brothers. 
It is disliked by the aristocracy, but 
much approved by moralists and 
publicists. 

From 1070 till 1362, the business 
and pleadings of the law courts were 
in Norman French. The pleas were 
then in English, and the enrolments 
in Latin. But, in the age of Crom¬ 
well, both were in English; and it 
was so settled in 1730. 

A Feod, or feud, was a graDt of 
land to a vassal, on condition to the 
lord, as for military service, &c. 
This was the feudal system. 

The King's Title .—Henry the 
Eighth was the first King of Eng¬ 
land who assumed the title of Ma¬ 
jesty. Before his reign, the Sove¬ 
reigns were usually addressed “ My 
Liege,” and “Your Grace.” The 
latter epithet was originally con¬ 
ferred on Henry the Fourth; “Ex¬ 
cellent Grace” was given to Henry 
the Sixth; “Most High and Mighty 
Prince,” to Edward the Fourth; 
“Highn^s” to Henry the Seventh; 
whicn last expression, and some¬ 
times “ Grace,” was used to Henry 
the Eighth. About the end of this 
reign, all titles were absorbed by 
that of “ Majesty,” with which 
Francis the First addressed him at 
their interview in 1520. James the 
First coupled this title to the pre¬ 
sent “ Sacred,” or “Most Excellent 
Majesty.” 

Before the'union of the Crowns, 
Britain alone was in general use, in 
the style of our Sovereigns, to signify 
England and Wales. Alfred, how¬ 
ever, was called “Governor of the 
Christians of Britain j” Edgar, “Mo- 





196 


HISTORY, &c. 


narch of Britain;” Henry the Se¬ 
cond, “King of Britain ;” and John, 
“Rex Britanniarum, King of the 
Britons.” 

The royal style settled on the 5th 
of November, 1800, on the union 
with Ireland, which was to com¬ 
mence from the first of January, 
1801, runs thus:—“ George the Third, 
by the Grace of God, of the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire¬ 
land, King, Defender of the Faith, 
and ihe United Church of England 
and Ireland, on Earth, the Supreme 
Head.” 

In Latin, “Georgius Tertius Dei 
Gratia Britanniarum Rex,” &c.; the 
word Britanniarum, which was first 
introduced on this occasion, being 
regarded as expressive, under one 
term, the United Kingdoms of Eng¬ 
land, Scotland, and Ireland. 

Prince is evidently derived from 
the Latin word Princcps, or Chief. 

Duke .—This is a title of honour, 
or nobility, next below a Prince. It 
is a Roman dignity; and the first 
Dukes (Duces, leaders) were com¬ 
manders of armies.—Under the lat¬ 
ter Emperors, the Governors of pro¬ 
vinces were styled Duces. When 
the Goths and Vandals overran the 
provinces of the Western Empire, 
they abolished the Roman dignities ; 
but the Franks and others divided all 
Gaul into Duchies and Counties, and 
gave the name of Dukes (Duces) or 
Counts (Comites), as the case might 
be, to them respectively. 

In England, during the times of 
the Saxons, the officers and com¬ 
manders of armies were called 
Dukes, after the manner of the Ro¬ 
mans. After the Conqueror’s time, 
the title lay dormant till the reign of 
Edward the Third, who created his 
son Edward (first called the Black 
Prince) Duke of Cornwall. 

Marquis. — (Marquis, Fr.; Mar¬ 
ques, Sp.; Marchese, Ital.; Marg- 
grqff, Sax.; Markgrave, Belg.)—A 
title of honour next below that of 
Duke, and said to be derived from 
the Harcommanni, an ancient peo¬ 
ple who inhabited the marches of 
Brandenburg. It was introduced 
into England by Richard the Se¬ 
cond, who created Robert Vere 
(Earl of Oxford) Marquis of Dublin. 
The title is originally French; the 


Romans were unacquainted with it. 

Marquises were formerly Governors 
of frontier towns, or provinces, call¬ 
ed Marches . 

Earl .—This is an English title of 
nobility next below a Marquis, and 
above a Viscount. Earls were an¬ 
ciently attendants or associates of 
the King in his Council and warlike 
expeditions; as Counles (Counts) 
were of the Magistrates of Rome. 
Hence Earls are called in Latin 
Countes, and in French Comtes . 
The Germans call them Graves, as 
Margrave, &c.; the Saxons Eorl- 
dermen; the Danes Eorlas, and the 
English Earls. William the Nor¬ 
man first made the title hereditary. 

Viscount .—This title is used for 
an order, or dignity, next below an 
Earl. It was an ancient title as an 
office, but is a modern one as a dig¬ 
nity, being never mentioned as such 
before the reign of Henry the Sixth. 
It is supposed to have been intro¬ 
duced by the Normans. 

Baron is derived from the Latin 
Baro, which was used in the pure 
age of that language for Vir, a val¬ 
iant man. Hence those placed next 
the King in battle were called Ba¬ 
rones, as being the bravest of the 
army; and as Princes frequently 
rewarded the bravery and fidelity of 
those about them, the word was used 
for any noble person who held a fee 
immediately of the King. Baron 
signifies in England a Lord, or Peer 
of the lowest class; or a degree of 
nobility, next below that of a Vis¬ 
count, and above that of a Baronet. 
Barons are Lords of Parliament, and 
Peers of the Realm. 

Lord .—This is a general name for 
a Peer of England, which is also 
applied to several offices, as Lord 
Chancellor, Lord Mayor, &c. It is 
a Saxon word, but abreviated from 
two syllables into one; for it was 
originally Hlqford, which, by drop¬ 
ping the aspirate,became Laford ,and 
afterwards, by contraction, Lord .— 
“ The etymology of this word,” says 
a writer, “is worth observing, for it 
was composed of Hlaf, a loaf of 
bread, and Ford, to give or afford; 
so that Hlqford. now Lord, implies 
a giver of bread; because in those 
ages, such great men kept extraor¬ 
dinary houses, and fed the poor; for 




HISTORY, &c. 


which reason they were called givers 
of bread.” 

Lady .—In former days, when men 
of large fortune lived constantly at 
their mansion, or manor-houses, the 
good ladies, their wives, as con¬ 
stantly served out to the poor week¬ 
ly, with their own hands, a certain 
quantity of bread, and were, there¬ 
fore, called Lcf-days —two Saxon 
words, signifying Bread-giver. As 
the practice became less frequent, 
the words were soon corrupted; and 
the mistress of the manor is called, 
to this day, the Lady , i. e. Ltf-day. 
As a title of honour, it properly be¬ 
longs only to the daughters of Earls, 
and of all higher rank; but custom 
has made it a term of complaisance 
for the wives of knights, and all wo¬ 
men of eminence or gentility. 

Edward II. was murdered in a 
solitary chamber, now show r n at 
Berkeley castle, with the bed and 
pillows, and marks of blood on the 
floor. 

Richard II. was killed in a room 
in Pontrefact castle, now in ruins, 
but nearly perfect on three sides. 

The bedstead and travelling trea¬ 
sury of Richard III. is still shown 
at Rothley, near Leicester. It was 
hollow, and full of gold pieces, not 
discovered till 120 years afterwards. 
His stone-coffin, and the skull of 
Wolsey, were for years in possession 
of Sir R. Phillips. 

Edward I. first banished the Jews 
from England; but Cromwell per¬ 
mitted their return. As they could 
hold no property in land, in any 
Christian country, they were the 
universal exchange brokers, and 
dealers in money and government 
funds. They enable all Christian 
governments to borrow and to carry 
on wars. The Goldsmidts were the 
agents of the Pitt administration ; 
and Rothschild, the modern Jew, is 
necessary to all the governments of 
Europe, conferring on each, on due 
security, the monetary strength of 
the whole. 

Magna Charta demanded wit¬ 
nesses before trial; and, since Ed¬ 
ward III., the fictitious names of 
John Doe and Richard Roe are put 
into writs, as pretended witnesses! 

The power which the House of 
Commons possesses of granting or 


PJ7 

withholding subsidies or grants to 
the crown or executive power—and 
the indispensable assent of each 
branch of the British legislature in 
the enactment of law, which govern 
the courts of law and bind the peo¬ 
ple—confer an influence on that 
body which obliges the crown to 
compromise with the leaders or ma¬ 
jorities, by conferring on them the 
ministerial direction of the govern¬ 
ment. Hence, as these parties vacil¬ 
late, changes of administration take 
place. Again, as the restoration in 
1660 was the act of the people or 
their leaders, and, as the revolution 
in 1688 was also the act of the peo¬ 
ple or their leaders; so the crown, 
by policy and habit, yields to this 
influence, and changes of adminis¬ 
tration are evidences of the fluctua¬ 
ting ascendancy of parties. Since 
those periods, therefore, the changes 
have been numerous. The tw T o par¬ 
ties in the aristocracy are the Whig 
and Tory —those who would curb 
the power of the crown, and those 
who would curb the power of the 
people. But among the people there 
are four parties, those who follow 
the aristocracy as Whig or Tory; 
those W'ho seek to increase the influ¬ 
ence of the people in parliament, and 
render the House of Commons a 
real representation, who are called 
reformers; and those who are re¬ 
publicans. 

The first summonses for calling a 
parliament, under the Normans,were 
in the 49th of Henry II. 

Chivalry appears to have emanated 
from the combats in ampitheatres, 
instituted by the-semi-barbarous Ro¬ 
mans. With greater propriety, men 
fought instead of animals; the 
combats were a species of boxing- 
matches, in which the parties were 
covered with armour, and provided 
with spears, swords, battle-axes, and 
maces. Tilts, jugts, and tourna~ 
ments occurred on the return of the 
crusaders from the holy wars. For 
3 or 400 years they were the chief 
amusements of courts, and the suc¬ 
cessful combatants acquired celebri¬ 
ty, knighthood, and the favour'of 
the ladies; their seconds, or bottle- 
holders, they called ’squires. When 
pub lick combats declined, successful 
knights travelled in quest of adven¬ 
tures, to correct injustice, and fight 






198 


HISTORY, &c. 


in the cause of the ladies; and the 
consequent follies gave rise to the 
novel of Don Quixote. 

The revenues of the 193 abbeys, 
dissolved at the reformation or gene¬ 
ral plunder, were 2,853,000/., or 15,- 
<300/. each, on the average. The 
lands given to court favourites 
would, at this time, pay half the in¬ 
terest of the publick debt. 

At the time of the violent dissolu¬ 
tion of the religious houses by Henry 
VIII., estatesleft to them, in trust , 
by pious persons, for the poor and 
sundry charitable purposes, worth a 
million per annum, and now worth 
20 millions, were seized by the crown 
and granted to the servile parlia¬ 
ment, nobility, and courtiers, who, 
since that time, have continued to 
enjoy the same. 

17,000 acres were added to the New 
Forest in the reign of William I. 

The-tyrant, William I., to preserve 
his game, made it forfeiture of pro¬ 
perty, and imprisonment to disable 
a wild beast; and loss of eyes for a 
stag, buck, or boar. Of these laws, 
the clergy were zealous promoters ; 
and they protested against ameliora¬ 
tions under Henry III. 

The curfew was a law only till the 
accession of Henry I. Since that 
time, the 8 o’clock evening-bell has 
been a custom only. Henry, at the 
same time, voluntarily proclaimed 
the first charter of liberties, which 
was confirmed by Stephen and Hen¬ 
ry II., but neglected till extorted 
from John. 

The title of Duke of Clarence is 
derived from the earldom of Clare, 
in Suffolk. 

The title of Duke of Albemarle is 
derived from the earldom of Aumerle, 
or Albemarle, in Upper Normandy. 

Fair Rosamond, the favourite of 
Henry II., had a son by him, Wil¬ 
liam Longspee, earl of Salisbury, 
who was a constant adherent of his 
brother, the- tyrant John, and a man 
of great renown in the events of that 
turbulent age. He died in 1226; but 
his widow, not less remarkable for 
her personal deeds, lived till 1263, 
and died Abbess of Lacock. 

From the 12th to the 15th century, 
the barons of England were so inde¬ 


pendent of the sovereign, that thev 
often made formal wars on each 
other; they tried causes, and ad¬ 
ministered justice in the Barons’ 
Court, in the great hall pf their cas¬ 
tles, and had prisons within them; 
and they even coined money. The 
Earl of Warrene held numerous ma¬ 
nors in twelve different counties; 
and the sixth Earl of Douglas used 
to be attended by 2000 horse. Ba¬ 
rons at first sat in parliament to per¬ 
form a duty as possessors of land 
belonging to the king; but Richard 
II. summoned them by writ, with¬ 
out reference to their lands; and 
made peers by letters patent, a prac¬ 
tice which continues to this day. 

20/. a year was the income of a 
knight; a baron’s, 266/. 13s. Ad.; and, 
an earl’s, 400/., in the 13th century. 
Their tribute, or relief, was a fourth. 

Knights baronets, with male de¬ 
scent, was a contrivance of Cecil, 
Earl of Salisbury, to raise money for 
King James to reduce and civilize 
Ulster. The party applying were re¬ 
quired to have 1000/. per annum, to 
be of good birth, and to raise 30 foot- 
soldiers, and maintain them in Ulster 
for three years ; or, as an equivalent, 
pay 1000/. One hundred soon obtain¬ 
ed the title: and the first who applied 
and got it was Sir Nicholas Bacon, 
of Redgrave, Suffolk. This title was 
extended to Scotland, for the pur¬ 
pose of settling Nova Scotia; and Sir 
Robert Gordone, of Gordon-stone, 
was the first baronet, in 1625; and 
these Scotch baronets are now called 
Baronets of Nova Scotia. 

Knights bannerets led their vas¬ 
sals to battle under their own ban¬ 
ner ; but knights bachelors were 
those who were commanded by a 
superiour. The former were expected 
to bring 100 men into the field. 

Esquires were, among tie Greeks 
and Romans, shield-bearers and 
armour-bearers, and called armiger 
and scutigemlus, from which last 
comes the word esquire. A British 
queen is recorded as marrying the 
armigerum , or esquire of her hus¬ 
band. Under Charlemagne they 
were called Schildknappa; then by 
the French, Ecuyer; Anglicized, 
Esquire ; and now conferred on all 
who have a good coat or a clean 
shirt. 






HISTORY, &c. 


109 


Bachelor was a title of rank in the 
middle ages, between an esquire and 
knight, from Bas Chevalier. 

Villain, in ancient times meant a 
country labourer. 

A boor, in modern language, signi¬ 
fies anv unlettered vulgar person; 
but under the Norman princes, this 
class, called villains, was divided into 
vassal boors and free boors; those 
who were sold with the land, and 
those who were free, to choose 
an employer. To this day the dis¬ 
tinction prevails in some countries, 
and particularly in Russia, where the 
vassal-boors are divided into classes, 
as boors belonging to the sovereign; 
mining boors, who are sold with the 
property; and private boors, who be¬ 
long to the nobility, and perform the 
labour on their estates ; they amount 
to 12 or 15 millions. 

The three bastard sons of John of 
Gaunt, by Katharine S winford, were 
called Beaufort, from his castle in 
France, and made Dukes of Somer¬ 
set and Exeter, and Marquisses and 
Earls of Dorset. 

In 1290, the royal family of Scot¬ 
land became extinct, and the rights 
of several competitors were submit¬ 
ted to the arbitration of Edward I., 
he made his award in favour of John 
Baliol. The Scots were dissatisfied, 
and preferred successively William 
Wallace and R.obert Bruce, which 
led to an invasion and conquest of 
Scotland by Edward. Fresh dis¬ 
turbances in Scotland led him to as¬ 
semble an army at Carlisle, where he 
died, in 1307 ; but, in 1314, the battle 
of Bannockburn terminated the war. 


The battle of Bannockburn was 

fought on the 25th of June, 1314, be¬ 
tween the Scots, under Robert Bruce, 
and the English, under the young 
King, Edward II. The English 
crossed a rivulet to the attack, but 
Bruce having dug pits, which he had 
covered, they fell into them, and were 
thrown into confusion. The route 
was complete, and 50,000 English 
were killed or taken prisoners. 

The Cinque or Five Ports of Dover. 
Sandwich, Romney,Winchelsea, and 
Rye, as the nearest points to France, 
were anciently considered as the keys 
of the kingdom, and therefore put 
under a Lord Warden. 

Saddles were not used till the third 
century. 

Estrays are animals found at large, 
without owner; and waifs are stolen 
property, left by felons; both belong 
to the lord of the manor. 

TheEssoign-dayis the first day of 
every term; but usage concedes three 
days as essoign or excuse. 

Quit-rent is so called from white- 
rent, being to be paid in silver; which, 
in other rents, were paid in kind. 

The Spanish Armada, for invading 
England in 1588, consisted of 130 
ships, of which 100 were larger than 
any before built. It conveyed 19,295 
soldiers, 10.500 seamen, and 2630 
brass cannon. They w r ere to convey 
an army of 34,000 men from the 
Scheldt, in flat-bottom boats. The 
English opposing fleet, of smaller 
vessels, was about 101 ships. The 
Armada returned by the Shetland 
Islands, and not more than half 
reached the Spanish ports. 


The body of Thomas Beaufort, 
Duke of Exeter, who died in 1427, 
was found, in 1772, in the ruins of 
the Abbey of St. Edmondsbury, 
wrapped in lead. The lead was open¬ 
ed, and the body found fresh. Some 
brutal workmen stole away the lead, 
and then threw the corpse into a 
hole, which they filled up. 

Agincourt is a village in Picardy, 
where Henry V. was intercepted with 
about 20,000 men, by 100,000 under 
the Due d’Alen$on, Oct. 25, 1415. 
The French were defeated with the 
loss of 10,000 slain, and 14,000 made 
prisoners, whom Henry barbarously 
murdered under a false alarm. 


The right of Gleaning is founded 
on the express injunction of the Mo¬ 
saic law, which Jesus declared he 
came to fulfil and enforce. 

Racks, for extorting confessions, 
were made of pulleys, cords, thumb¬ 
screws, &c., by which the parties 
were made to confess whatever was 
wished. 

The writs issued in chancery are 
those which relate to the crown, 
which used to be kept in a little bag; 
and those relative to the subject kept 
in a hamper; and hence the hanni- 
per-office and petty-bag-office. 

1 A pardon cannot follow an im- 





200 HISTOR Y, &c. __ 

which a decision according to law, 
and not according to equity, is made. 


peachment by the House of Com¬ 
mons. 

The Guelphs succeeded to the Eng¬ 
lish throne by act of parliament, as 
Protestant descendants of Elizabeth, 
the daughter of James I. married to 
Frederic Elector Palatine, whose 
daughter SopTiia married Ernest 
Augustus, Bishop of Osnaburgh, af¬ 
terwards Duke of Hanover, who, in 
1692, was created ninth Elector of 
the German Empire. 

In passing British laws (if private) 
a petition for leave is presented, and 
referred to a committee for leave to 
bring in the bill: if publick, the bill is 
moved without leave; but, in the 
lords, it is referred to two judges to 
report. After the second reading it 
goes before a committee, select, or of 
the whole house. It is then read a 
third time, and passed; first in one 
house and then in the other, when 
the royal assent makes it law. 

Bail is security to appear and an¬ 
swer to some accusation; and, by an 
abuse of law, is in England exacted 
for claims of debt, but restricted to 
sums above 25Z. The vexations of 
the system render it a source of in¬ 
tolerable oppression. The law re¬ 
fuses bail on sworn charges for trea¬ 
son, murder, manslaughter, felony, 
and outlawry. Excessive bail is for¬ 
bidden. 

No person can be arrested in a fair 
except for debts contracted there, or 
promised there to be paid. This is 
ancient law, opposed to tho-turpitude 
of modern legislation, and the villany 
of legal practice unrestrained by be¬ 
nevolent legislation. 

In England, a male of 12 may take 
the oath of allegiance; at 14, may 
consent to marriage, or choose a 
uardian, or make a will; at 17, may 
e an executor; and, at 21, is of age. 
A female, at 12. may consent to a 
marriage ; at 14, may choose a guar¬ 
dian ; at 17, may be an executrix; 
and, at 21, is of age. 

By the statutes of the 9th and 13th 
of William III., it is enacted, that 
submissions to arbitration may be a 
rule of any of the courts of record, 
and equivalent in force to the deci¬ 
sion of a jury. These statutes are, 
however, unavailing, owing to bar¬ 
risters being often made arbiters, by 


— Vide Gazelee, 

The first administration of Charles 
II. was a conciliating mixture of re¬ 
spectable republicans, and his per¬ 
sonal adherents while abroad, under 
Clarendon. It lasted till 1663. 

The second was formed under the 
influence of the Duke of York, a zeal¬ 
ous Papist, and lasted till 1670. 

The third, called the Cabal, from 
the initials of their names—Clifford, 
Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and 
Lauderdale. Publick crime and un- 
rincipled policy was now at its 
eight, and no man’s life or honour 
was secure. 

King James, in 1685, continued, 
with some additions, the administra¬ 
tion of his brother. 

King William, in 1689, established 
the first decided Whig administra¬ 
tion. In 1690, he admitted Tories; 
and, in 1693, the Whigs were restored. 

Queen Anne, in 1702, chose a Whig 
Administration till 1710, consisting 
of Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, the 
Duke of Marlborough, &v. The To¬ 
ries succeeded, under Harley, Bo- 
lingbroke, and the Clarendons. 

George I., in 1714, chose a Whig 
administration; and the Tories wr re 
prosecuted. 

George II. continued the Whigs in 
ower; but a reforming party, led 
y Windham, Shippen, Hungerford, 
and Pitt, now appeared in parliament. 
At this time, Whigs and Tories were 
considered as alienated from the in¬ 
terests of the people. In 1739, the 
Walpole administration yielded to a 
more popular Whig party ; and, in 
1744, other Whigs came into power. 

In 1754, a mixed administration 
was formed under the Duke of New¬ 
castle; but, in 1756, a change took 
place in favour of the Whigs, and the 
first Pitt became minister. 

George III., in 1760, ejected the 
Whigs and formed a Tory adminis¬ 
tration under Bute and Jenkinson. 

In 1763, Grenville succeeded Bute; 
and his prosecutions of Wilkes, and 
plans of taxing America, changed 
the fortunes of the empire. 

In 1765, the Whigs came into 
power under the Marquis of Rock- 





201 


HISTORY, &c. 


ingham; and, m 1766, a change of 
men took place, and Mr. Pitt return¬ 
ed to office. 

In 1771, the Tory administration 
of Lord North was formed, and con¬ 
tinued through the American war, 
till 1782, when the Whigs, under the 
Marquis of Rockingham, came into 
power. The death of the marquis 
occasioned a division of the Whigs, 
and a coalition of Mr. Fox, at the 
head of one division, with Lord 
North, at the head of the Tories, in 
1783. Late in that year, the admi¬ 
nistration of the second Pitt was 
formed, and it continued on Tory prin¬ 
ciples till the French war in 1801. 

In 1801, another Tory administra¬ 
tion was formed under Addington. 

In 1804, the Pitt administration 
was restored. Early in 1806 Pitt 
died, and a Whig administration 
succeeded under Mr. Fox; but he 
dying in September, a Tory admi¬ 
nistration, under Perceval, and El¬ 
don, succeeded in the February fol¬ 
lowing. Perceval was shot in 1812 ; 
but tne same administration was 
continued by George IV., under 
Liverpool, till Liverpool’s death, in 
1827. 

A mixed administration succeeded 
of Whigs and Tories under Canning, 
who died in the same year; and was 
succeeded by Lord Goderich and a 
Tory party, and replaced, in 1828, by 
the Duke of Wellington, who, in 
1830 was succeeded by Earl Grey and 
the Whigs. 

The Act of Union with Scotland 
was the 6th of Anne, cap. 8, and 
consisted of 25 articles, one of which 
provides, that the land-tax of Scot¬ 
land shall be but in a fixed proportion 
to that of England. 

The battle of Culloden, in which 
the Guelphs, under William Duke of 
Cumberland, defeated the last of the 
Stuarts, took place in April, 1745, 
near Inverness. Nearly 3000 of the 
Scots were killed on the field, or bar¬ 
barously slaughtered afterwards in 
the pursuit; while the executioner 
made terrible examples of many 
others. Prince Charles, after wan¬ 
dering as a fugitive, and experienc¬ 
ing many romantick adventures, 
escaped to France, and died at Rome, 
Sn 1788. 


of the Peace, in France, amount to 
several thousand, and are chiefly 
lawyers, with small salaries. They 
decide petty cases of property, be¬ 
sides keeping the peace, and, in other 
respects, their functions resemble 
those of English Justices of the 
Peace, with this incalculable and 
exemplary advantage, that no action 
can be maintained in any court, till 
the Juge de Paix has certified that 
he has heard the parties, and finds it 
impossible totfeconcile the difference. 

By the salique law in France, no 
female can succeed to the throne. 

The word writ is derived from the 
Saxon, v>ritan , to write. 

De facto is applied to actual pos¬ 
session, and de jure , to right. 

A Hindoo jury, agreeable to an¬ 
cient custom, consists of five per¬ 
sons, chosen from among the elders; 
two by the plaintiff, two by the de¬ 
fendant, and the fifth by the admi¬ 
nistrator of justice. 

Twelve persons, assembled for an 
unlawful purpose, constitute a riotous 
assembly. 

The number of barristers, in 1831, 
was 1132, whose fees constituted one 
fourth of the whole expenses of law¬ 
suits; conveyancers and pleaders, 
132; London attorneys, 9342; coun¬ 
try attorneys, 2742; total number of 
lawyers in England and Wales, 
13,348, being 453 more than there 
were on the 1st January, 1830. For 
the 10 years ending 1830, the attor¬ 
neys paid, in duties on articles of 
clerkship, admissions, and yearly 
certificates, nearly 100,000J. sterling. 

The wali of Adrian and Severus, 
built to prevent the eruptions of the 
Scots and Piets, extended from the 
Tyne to Solway frith, and was 80 
miles long, 12 feet high, and 8 in 
thickness, with watch-towers. 

The Romans divided Britain into 
four provinces :— 

1. Wales, called Britannia. 

2. South of the Thames, called 
Britannia prima. 

3. The counties from the Thames 
to the parallel of the Humber and 
Mersey, called Flavia Ccesariensis. 
And, 

4. The Northern Counties, called 
Maxima Ccesarien&is. 


The Juges de Paix , or Justices 


They also occupied Scotland to 






202 


HISTORY, &c. 


the parallel of the Forth and Clyde, 
called Yalentia. And further north, 
in the eastern half, were the Picti; 
and, in the western, the Scoti; who 
were identified with Hibernia or 
Scotia. 

In 207, Severus kept the imperial 
court at Eboracum, now York; and, 
in 312, the Emperor Constantine was 
born at York, his mother (Helena) 
being understood to be his father’s 
mistress, and an inn-keeper’s daugh¬ 
ter at Colchester; for his father mar¬ 
ried another in her lifetime. 

In religion the Britons were De¬ 
ists, or disciples of the druids ; the 
Romans introduced the gods of the 
Grecian Mythology; the Saxons 
were idolaters, and called the days of 
the week after the objects and gods 
of their worship. In 597, Pope Gre¬ 
gory sent Augustine to preach Chris¬ 
tianity in the south, and Paulinus in 
the north. It spread till Adelfrid, 
King of Deiri, or Northumbria, which 
included Maxima Cccsariensisj sus¬ 
tained the Saxon religion, and made 
conquests on all sides, slaying no 
less than 1200 monks in a battle 
near Chester. Being afterwards de¬ 
feated and succeeded by Edwin, he 
became a convert to Paulinus ; ana, 
after struggles for a century, Chris¬ 
tianity prevailed. 

The Trojan princes were contem¬ 
poraneous with the British princes 
about 1000 years. The Romans go¬ 
verned 400; the Saxons about 600; 
and the Norman succession about 
765 years to this time. 

Wales continued a separate sove¬ 
reignty till Edward I., in 1283 ; and 
Scotland till its king succeeded of 
right to both kingdoms in 1603. Ire¬ 
land was invaded by Henry II. in 
1172, but never quite conquered till 
the time of Cromwell. The Legis¬ 
latures of England and Scotland, 
were united in 1706; and, of Great 
Britain and Ireland, in 1800. 

The wars in France, in which 
England was involved for nearly 
two centuries, arose from the Dukes 
of Normandy being Kings of Eng¬ 
land. They held Normandy under 
fief granted to Rollo, and were too 
powerful for their lord. Intermarry¬ 
ing too in the French court, they ac¬ 
quired titles to the French crown, 
which France opposed; and, hence, 


wars to drive them out of Normandy 
on the French side, and wars of en¬ 
croachment on the other side. The 
English princes gained bloody vic¬ 
tories at Cressy, Poictiers, and 
Agincourt; but they were finally 
driven out of France, in the reign ol 
Henry VI., and lost Calais, by 
surprise, in the reign of Mary. It 
was to the Englisn people a fortu¬ 
nate loss; but the rival policy of the 
two governments have, even since 
then, caused half as many years of 
war as of peace. 

Wat Tyler’s rebellion took place 
in 1389, and Jack Cade’s in 1450. 
Both began in Kent, were very fatal 
to London, and terminated by the 
death of their leaders. One paved 
the way for the dethronement of 
Richard II., by his cousin, Henry 
Duke of Lancaster ; and the other 
to the destruction of Henry VI., and 
the House of Lancaster, or the Red 
Roses, by their cousins of the House 
of York, or the White Roses. The 
first battle was at St. Albans, in 
1455, and the last at Tewkesbury, in 
1471; and, in the 16 years, above 30 
great battles were fought, the coun¬ 
try half depopulated, and nearly the 
whole of the nobility exterminated. 

In this war the nobles, to seduce 
their vassals to join their standards, 
emancipated them; and, in 30 years 
after, the statute of alienations ena¬ 
bled the commoners to purchase 
land, and gave a new character to 
society. 

The wars of the White and Red 
Roses arose thus. Edward III. had 
three sons, the Prince of Wales, the 
Duke of York, and the Duke of Lan¬ 
caster ; each of whom had sons* 
The Prince of Wales died before 
him ; and he was succeeded, of right, 
by his minor grandson, Richard II., 
who became unpopular, and banished 
his cousin, Henry of Lancaster. 
Henry returned, headed the malcon¬ 
tents, who, on dethroning Richard, 
made Henry king, in prejudice of 
the Duke of York and his family, 
who yielded to the succession ot 
Henry V. and VI. The latter mar¬ 
ried Margaret of Anjou, who quar¬ 
relled with the then Duke of York, 
grandson of Edward III.; a contest 
ensued, and the duke, and one of 
his sons, were killed at Wakefield. 
His sons fled, found partisans, an 






tile war continued till the Lancas¬ 

trians were destroyed ; and the bro¬ 
thers, Edward IV. and Richard III., 
successively filled the throne. Henry 
VII., who killed Richard in 1485, was 
great grandson to Lionel, a fourth 
son of Edward III.; and his mother 
was widow of Henry V., and had 
him by a second husband, of the 
name of Tudor; but, to remove 
doubts, he married the daughter of 
Edward IV., and, though he behaved 
verv ill to her, had by lier two sons, 
Arthur, who died before him, and 
Henry the Eighth. Henry had also 
a daughter Margaret, who was mar¬ 
ried to the King of Scotland ; and, 
on his grand-children dying without 
issue, her descendant, James VI. of 
Scotland, succeeded to the crown as 
James I. of England; and, from a. 
daughter of his, there descended the 
House of Hanover. 

The male line of the Stuarts in 
the fourth descent were set aside by 
act of parliament at the revolution, 
owing to their being Catholicks. But, 
in 1715 and 1745, the son and grand¬ 
son of James II. made vigorous ef¬ 
forts to recover their hereditary 
rights. In those years they landed 
in Scotland, and marched into Eng¬ 
land ; but the first was defeated near 
Preston, and the second, after re¬ 
treating from Derby, was defeated at 
Culloden, on the 16th of April, 1746. 
Both victories were followed by nu¬ 
merous vindictive executions, and the 
victory at Culloden by a military 
butchery little creditable" to the 
powers of the time. This male line 
is now extinct. 

The first coinage in England was 
under the Romans, at Camulodu- 
num , or Colchester; and forty va¬ 
rieties of it are to be found in cabi¬ 
nets. The Britons had no coinage, 
and, as a substitute for gross barter, 
paid metal by weight. 

In 628, the first stone church was 
built by Edwin, King of Northum¬ 
bria, at York, which soon after was 
covered with lead, and then glazed. 
Till then, houses and buildings were 
of wood, or plaster or mud. The 
building of Wearmouth Abbey soon 
after led to the bringing of glass- 
makers from the continent. 

Rents, down to the conquest, and 
chiefly afterwards, were paid in 


HISTORY, &c. 


203 


kind,—as in honey, bread, ale, oxen, 

sheep, poultry, cheese, butter, and 
fish, equal to a 15th or 20th of the 
produce. 

Edwin, King of Northumbria, in 
the 7th century was the precursor of 
Alfred in the 9th, and an exemplary 
improver and ameliorator. His coin¬ 
age is still in existence; and, though 
he improved Yorkshire, yet, so late 
as the reign of Edward III., there 
was no recorded town m the now 
saturated county of Lancashire. 

The pound sterling was, in Saxon 
times, a pound troy of silver, and a 
shilling its twentieth, consequently 
above three times as large as at pre¬ 
sent. 

Wakes and annual feasts were es¬ 
tablished by the Saxons, in celebra¬ 
tion of the Saint’s day of their parish 
church; and market-towns were 
then designated as such. 

Originally juries were 12 men, who, 
on oath, certified their belief of inno¬ 
cence. Then, in formal trials, they 
were the persons present; and, in 
time, fixed at 12. 

After the battle of Hastings, a 
list was taken of William’s chiefs, 
amounting to 629, and called the 
Battle Roll; among whom the lands 
and distinctions of the followers of 
Harold were distributed. The north¬ 
ern counties held out; and York 
was defended, but taken, its defend¬ 
ers put to death, and the whole coun¬ 
try devastated, many ancient towns 
being utterly destroyed. 

The division of the kingdom into 
counties, hundreds, and tithings, is 
ascribed to Alfred; but there is evi¬ 
dence that some counties bore their 
names, and had those divisions 150 
years earlier. 

The tithing meant every 10 fami¬ 
lies ; and the hundred 10 tithings, 
governed by a head constable or bai¬ 
liff' who held courts for the trial of 
causes; and the hundred is still lia¬ 
ble for damages by unlawful acts. 

Alfred also was said to be the con¬ 
triver of trial by jury, but we have 
evidence of such trials long before 
his time. In a cause tried at Ha- 
warden, in Flintshire, nearly a cen¬ 
tury before Alfred, we have a list of 
the twelve jurors, confirmed too by 
the fact that the descendants of one 




204 


HISTORY, &c. 


of them, called Corbyn of the Gate, 
still preserve their name and resi¬ 
dence at a spot in the parish, called 
the Gate. 

It is more probable that Alfred 
better regulated all these legal pro¬ 
visions, and perhaps the divisions of 

{ mrishes also, of which the earliest 
ist is that of Pope Nicholas, who, in 
1291, ordered an account of the value 
of all English benefices to be taken, 
and which is still preserved. 

Doomsday-book, or Dom-boc, was 
an account of a survey of all the 
lands of the kingdom, taken by the 
survey of commissioners and the la¬ 
bour of six years. It was lately 
printed from the original, still pre¬ 
served at Westminster. It divides 
the land into oxgangs or bovates of 
12 or 15 acres; virgates of 40 acres; 
carucates of 8 oxgangs, or 100 acres; 
and hides of about 120 acres, or 
more. 

Danegeld. was a land-tax imposed 
by Ethelred, to enable him to expel 
the Danes, but retained after. 

In Doomsday-book a carucate, or 
100 acres, was valued at only 32 d., 
and 4 at 10s.; and sometimes at 
only 8s. 

It appears that the annual revenue 
of the crown lands, between the 
Mersey and the Ribble, was, in the 
reign of Edward the Confessor, but 
149/. 16s. 10c/.; and, taken as crown- 
lands at 10 times too little, and mo¬ 
ney at 100 times greater worth, the 
whole was under 150,000/.; the same 
tract, as returned under the property- 
tax in 1814, was worth 2,569,761/. 

The Conqueror gave 398 manors 
to Roger de Poitou, who built Lan¬ 
caster and other castles; but rebel¬ 
ling against the tyrant, the whole 
were given to his son, William Ru¬ 
fus. They constitute the Duchy of 
Lancaster Estates, but are now 
much curtailed; hence arose the 
great power of the Dukes of Lan¬ 
caster. 

Edward IJI. made a levy of ship¬ 
ping to convey his army to France, 
in 1338; and assessed London, 25 
ships and 662 men ; Bristol 24 ships, 
and 600 men; Hull 16 ships and 466 
men; Portsmouth 5 ships and 96 
men; and Liverpool 1 bark and 6 
men. For the kingdom, 700 ships 
and 14,141 men. 


When Charles I. levied ship-mo¬ 
ney, in 1636, he assessed London 7 
ships of 4000 tons, and 1560 men; 
Yorkshire, 2 ships of 600 tons, or 
12,000/.; Bristol, 1 ship of 100 tons, 
or 1000/.; Lancashire, 1 ship of 400 
tons, or 1000/.; Hull, 140/. towards 
Yorkshire; and Liverpool 25/. to¬ 
wards 1000/. for Lancashire. 

At the Reformation, from 1538 to 
1544, Henry the Eighth unmercifully 
dissolved and seized on the revenues 
of 645 monasteries, 375 convents, 96 
colleges, 2374 chantries and free 
chapels, and 110 hospitals; giving 
the possessors a trifling annuity or 
simple donation. The proceeds were 
nearly 5 millions sterling, or 50 mill¬ 
ions in our present money; and their 
estates he lavished among his fa¬ 
vourites and courtiers, sending all 
opponents to the stake or the block. 

The Book of Innocent Sunday 
Sports, liberally published by Janies 
I., on the principle that Sunday is a 
Christian festival, so offended the 
Puritans, that its sanction by Charles 
I. was a primary cause of the civil 
wars. The Puritans regarded Sun¬ 
day as the Saturday of the Mosaick 
law, and adopting a Catholick fes¬ 
tival as the real sabbath, insisted on 
keeping Sunday, the first day, just 
as the Jews keep Saturday, the sev¬ 
enth day, or the ordained sabbath of 
the fourth commandment. The 
liberal views of James and Charles 
did not however, suit the religious 
prejudices of that day. 

The first clothing fabricks in Eng¬ 
land were made in the reign of Ed¬ 
ward III., and called Kendal cloth 
and Halifax cloth. 

In 1253, wheat sold at 2s. 6c/. per 
quarter; in 1272, a labourer got 1 id. 
per day; and a harvest man 2d. In 
1256, brewers sold 3 gallons of beer 
for It/. In 1248, the King paid 18s. 
4 d. for 37 sheep, or 6d. each. 

In 1300, wheat and barley fetched 
3s. 4c/., and oats Is. 8c/. per quarter; 
a cow, 6s.; a fat sheep, Is.; a hen, 
1|</.; and a pair of shoes 4d. Labour 
from l£c/. to 2d. per day. 

In 1314, parliament fixed the price 
of a fat ox at 16s.; a cow, 12s.; a fat 
hog, 3s. 4c/.; a sheep, Is. 2c/.; a couple 
of chickens, lcZ.; a goose, 2JeZ.; and 
eggs, ^d. per dozen. Arable land, in 
Kent, let from 3d. to 6d per acre; 





205 


HISTORY”, &c. 


pasture at Id; and meadow from id. 

to lOd 

In the middle of the 14th century, 
wine was id. per gallon ; wool was 
2s. per stone; Kendal cloth, from 3s. 
id. to 5s. per piece; wheat, from 4s. 
to 6s. per quarter. In 1500, oats 
were 2s. per quarter, and wheat 6s.; 
ale, 2d. per gallon. Labour, 2£eZ. to 
3 id. per day. 

In the 16th century, wheat ave¬ 
raged 21s.; and labour 8cZ. per day. 
During the civil wars, wheat ave¬ 
raged 3Z. 12s. At the Revolution, it 
was 1Z. 19s. At the Accession of 
George III., wheat was 33s.; barley, 
20s.; and oats, 15s. Labour, Is. to 
Is. 6<Z. per day. 

Before 1300, 11 oz. 2 dwts. of fine 
silver, and 18 dwts. of alloy, were 
equal to 20s. In 1412, the same was 
coined into 30s.; and, in 1527, into 
45s. But, in 1545, 6 oz. of silver and 
6 of alloy were coined into 48s.; in 
1546, but 4 of silver and 8 of alloy 
into 48s.; and, in 1551, the 5th of 
Edward VI., but 3 of silver and 9 of 
alloy were coined into 72s. Eliza¬ 
beth, in 1560, restored the old stan¬ 
dard in 60s.; and, in 1601, in 62s. It 
is now 66s., of the same standard. 

In the reign of Elizabeth, a house, 
in a country town, let for 4s. or 6s. 
per annum; and the purchase was 
5/. or 6Z. Wheat was Is. a bushel; 
malt and oats, 7 d.; an ox, 26s.; and 
a fat sheep, 2s. lOeZ. Claret, 2 4 e/., 
and red port, 3cZ. a quart. Labour 
id. to 6d. a day. 

The rental of Scotland, about the 
period of the Union, was but 317,018/.; 
but, in 1812, it was 6,108,050/., mo¬ 
ney being five times less valuable, so 
that improvements had increased it 
four-fold. The population was un¬ 
der 1 million; but, in 1821, it was 2 
millions. The ships had increased, 
too, from 215 to 3160; and the reve¬ 
nue was. in 1822, 40 times greater 
than in 1707; or 110,694/. and 4,292,- 
567/. 

The free parts of the English con¬ 
stitution, and the securities of civil 
liberty, were procured by Magna 
Charta, in 1216,—by Simon Mont- 
ford, Earl of Leicester, who obtained 
the first parliament in 1256, by the 
concessions of Edward I.. in return 
for subsidies to sustain his wars,— 
by the Trial by Jury,—by the Peti¬ 


tion of Right, drawn by Lord Coke,— 

by the Habeas Corpus Act, drawn by 
Lord Shaftesbury,—by the Bill of 
Rights and Act of Settlement, by the 
Libel Bill of C. J. Fox,—bytheCatho- 
lick Emancipation Bill,—and, finally, 
by the Reform Bill of 1831, planned 
by Lord Grey. The system would 
be perfect if sheriffs were obliged to 
summon juries in exact rotation from 
three districts; if elections were 
made by ballot, so as to render voli¬ 
tion free and bribery useless; and 
if members of municipal corpora 
tions were chosen by the inhabitant 
house-holders. 

The English champions of civil 
liberty, since its object has been 
understood, were—Hampden, Pym, 
Fairfax, Hollis, Coke, Vane, Lud¬ 
low, Lilburn, Milton, Sidney, Rus¬ 
sell, Marvel, Fletcher, Locke, Bur¬ 
net, Swift, Holt, Shippen, Glover, 
Chatham, Wilkes, Camden, Erskine, 
Cowper, Fox, Sheridan, Whitbread, 
Paine, Priestley, Price, Tooke, Stan¬ 
hope, Perry, Belsham, Romilly, 
Wakefield, and Cartwright. 

The best Reading Histories of 
England are those of Rapin, Hume, 
Smollet, Henry, Coote, and Lingard. 
Portions of Clarendon, Turner, Hal- 
lam, Belsham, Burnet, Ludlow, Lyt- 
tleton, and Spelman. The pecu¬ 
liar histories are Andrews, Enfield, 
Lloyd, Robertson, Milton, Anderson, 
Macauley, Plowden, Lawless, Wal¬ 
pole, Guthrie, and Whittaker. Then 
there are the Chronicles of Bed a, 
Gildas, Geoffrey, Froissart, Baker, 
Stowe, &c.; besides county and lo¬ 
cal histories in immense variety. 


ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Histohy is a record of the external 
circumstances, or general results of 
a course of publick events. Its records 
were vague, traditionary and erro¬ 
neous before the invention of letters, 
about 1500 or 1800 B. C. The earliest 
records were the Egyptian hiero- 
glyphieks, the first step towards let¬ 
ters, and some monuments, whose 
objects were described by exagge¬ 
rated tradition, or, when forgotten, 
imagined. After the invention of 
writing, most people kept publick 
scribes, or chroniclers, but as these 
records like- the London Gazette, 




206 


were subservient to the state, so the 
constant object of servile scribes was 
to gratify prevailing interests. But 
even of these, few have descended 
to our time in a perfect state, and we 
have, even in them, to depend on 
the translation of obscure and for¬ 
gotten tongues, while the whole are 
mingled with the errours and super¬ 
stitions of the age and people among 
whom they were written. Next to 
the Egyptian hierogiyphicks, the ce¬ 
lestial globe, made about 1200, in de¬ 
picting the heroes of incidents of the 
previous and passing age, is one of 
the least suspicious monuments; 
coins are others. The Chronicles 
of the Jews, beginning about 1200, 
the Parian Chronicle, the Histories 
of Herodotus and Ctesias, and the 
poems of Homer, are therefore the 
foundations of early ancient history. 

That mankind had attained great 
perfection mother arts and sciences, 
before the art of writing or recording 
was invented, is evident from monu¬ 
ments, especially those in Egypt, and 
all those connected with astronomy, 
a science of long observation and 
profound research. The Zodiack of 
Tentyra, at Paris, is proved, by the 
precession of the Equinoxes, to be 
5400 years old, and another, at Esnai, 
indicates much greater age—some 
French writers say 14,000 years. 

Early ancient geography lay in a 
narrow compass ; Greece and Italy 
were the extent north and west, ana 
the Indies in the East. The Persian 
Gulf, the Caspian, theEuxine, and the 
Mediterranean, bounded the coun¬ 
tries consecrated in Ancient History, 
and which extended over 20 degrees 
of longitude, or about 900 miles, by 
12 degrees of latitude, or 1800 miles. 
Arabia and Egypt lay to the south¬ 
west, Chaldea bordered on Arabia, 
south of the Euphrates: Babylonia 
lay on that river; Mesopotamia lay 
between it, on the Tigris; Assyria 
was in both ; Media to the west, and 
Parthia to the north; Syria lay to 
the west, and its extent was but 400 
miles long, and about 100 wide. They 
were large only in the eyes of the 
Greeks, but Bengal, some of the 
American States, and even France 
to the Rhine are, either of them, equal 
to the ancient empires. 

The ancients knew as little of the 


ANCIENT HIS TORy, & c._ 

of the interiour; Homer called all 


barbarous, remote from Greece; and 
beyond Thrace was the hyperborean 
region of darkness ; and beyond 
Etliiopia, the region of light inhabit¬ 
ed by Pigmies. The whole was sur¬ 
rounded, at the distance of 500 miles, 
by the River Ocean, by which the 
Argonauts returned from Colchis in 
the Black Sea; Eratosthenes and 
Strabo extended the land farther, and 
gave limited form to the old conti¬ 
nent, but omitted China, and made 
Lybia, Africa. Orpheus, Herodotus, 
Pliny, &c., were equally incongru¬ 
ous, and referred every thing to the 
Mediterranean, as a centre. The 
priests taught that the Temple of 
Apollo, at Delphos, was the centre 
of the world. Beyond the Archipe¬ 
lago and the Levant all was fable, 
and they believed that the whole 
plain of the earth might be viewed 
from any very high mountain. Some 
philosophers, as Thales, Aristotle, 
&c., taught that the earth was a 
sphere, but the vulgar believed the 
priesthood, who placed their hell 
under ground, or beyond the sea. y 

History necessarily begins with 
the art of recording, or writing, and 
this art appears to have been first 
exercised in Greece and the west, 
about 1500 or 1800 B. C. Like all 
arts, it doubtless was slow' and pro¬ 
gressive, and the first authors were, 
probably, not the inventors. Sensible 
hierogiyphicks would precede more 
refined ones; these would be long in 
taking the form of letters, and these 
long in being adopted and acquired. 
Till then, all previous history would 
be tradition, and the value of tradi¬ 
tion, in 1500 or 1800 B. C. may be 
estimated by its value at this day 
among the negroes, the American 
Indians, or the New Hollanders. In 
England what is the value, even in 
this age, of any tradition, beyond 
two or three generations'? and, when 
preserved, it always degenerates into 
miracle and absurdity. — 

All well-informed nations appear, 
after the invention of writing, to have 
kept chroniclers,who were tne priests 
or astrologers; and these generally 
prefixed some cosmogony, mingled 
with claims- of antiquity, with popu¬ 
lar legends, &c 

The Greeks refer the invention of 
surface of the earth, as the modems letters to Cadmus, about 1500, merely 





ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


207 


because he introduced them from 

Phoenicia; the Egyptians to Mem- 
non, about 1800, who probably bor¬ 
rowed them from the Hindoos ; and 
these again improved on those of 
the Chinese, whose 214 keys, sustain¬ 
ed by inflexible customs, were appa¬ 
rently the first transition from hie- 
roglyphicks to generick characters. 
Each key depends upon the number of 
strokes in it, and expresses a genus of 
ideas, while the hieroglyphick origin 
of the radix of most of them is pal¬ 
pable. It is a vulgar errour that they 
nave 80,000 characters, and they 
might infer that we also have as 
many as words, our characters for 
each word being different, on the 
same principle as theirs. 

Temporary notoriety is always in 
the inverse ratio of permanent cele¬ 
brity. That which strikes the vulgar 
and ignorant, is not calculated to en¬ 
dure the cool examination of intelli¬ 
gence; and that which satisfies the 
intelligent few, is not understood by 
the vulgar multitude. Every seven 
dr ten years has its vulgar prodigy, 
but the pantheon of Universal Histo¬ 
ry rejects all these popular idols, and 
consecrates none but truly original 
minds, applied to subjects of sub¬ 
stantial and universal interest. 

The earliest known chronicles are 
ihose of the Chinese, Hindoos, Jews, 
and perhaps those of the Irish nation. 
Their imperfect knowledge of phy- 
sicks, their general recognition of 
astrology, and their being in the 
hands of the priests, have filled them 
with fables. Some natural facts en¬ 
able us, however, to infer that sci¬ 
ences, the fruit of leisure, wealth, and 
power, existed; and thus we find, 
that the Chinese record an eclipse 
in the year 2800 B. C., and a general 
conjunction of the planets in 900 B. 
C.; we find, also, that the Hindoos 
record eclipses 3180 years before the 
Christian era; also, that the Per¬ 
sians describe positions of stars in 
the equinoxes 3000 B. C.; that Alex¬ 
ander found at Babylon celestial ob¬ 
servations for 1902 years, in 330 B. 
C.; and the Egyptians claimed ob¬ 
servations for 480,000 years, which, 
taken as the astronomical period of 
days, would be 1500 years. These 
recorded observations have been ex¬ 
amined by modern tables, corrected 
by refined theories and they exactly 


agree. There is, therefore, no doubt 
or question that these nations were 
astronomers 3000 B. C., of course, 
also, they wrote their observations ; 
and hence the bases of Grecian his¬ 
tory, founded on the story of Cad¬ 
mus, &c. must be false. 

Fohee formed the Chinese code be¬ 
tween 2900 and 2500 B. C. Confu¬ 
cius, their moral teacher, flourished 
about 600 B. C. 

The Hindoos begin the creation as 
a mere astronomical epoch, when all 
the planets were in Aries, or nearly 
2000 million of years since; and 
then, taking in the motion of the 
nodes and apsides, they extend it to 
4320 millions, which they call a Cul¬ 
pa, or day of Brahma. The Yug is 
a period which brings the sun and 
moon only into the same situation in 
the first of Aries, or in every 4,320,000 
years, an entire Calpa being 1000 
Yugs. Then 100 Calpas are consi¬ 
dered by the priest as the life of 
Brahma, 50 of which have expired. 
A Manwantera, or 306,720,000 years, 
is 71 Yugs of 4,320,000 years each, 
and the world is now in the 28th of 
the Satya Yug, and 7th Manwantera 
of 14. 

A vicala of time is 6 respirations, 
or 18 seconds, and 60 vicalas are a 
danda, or 18 minutes. A sidereal 
year is a day of the gods. 

Moses, the inspired author of the 
Book of Genesis, fixes the date of the 
creation 4004 B. C. 

The birth of Abraham was, by the 
Vulgate, about 1996 B. C.; but if 
430, instead of 215, be taken for the 
sojourn in Egypt, then his birth was 
in 2211. The epoch of the Delude 
depends on the time assigned to tne 
tenth and eleventh chapters. The 
Septuagint gives about 1100 years, 
and Josephus 850. The former then 
would fix the deluge about 3300, or 
1000 years before Jerome’s Vulgate. 
An astronomical cause would carry 
it back another 600 or 700 years, or 
to 3900, or 4000 B. C. the period as¬ 
signed by the Vulgate for the epoch 
of Adam. The Vulgate Chronology 
embarrasses every thing, but tne 
Septuagint, Josephus, and the Sama¬ 
ritan version, accord far better with 
all other ancient history. 

As the Jews were ignorant of 




208 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


chronology, the guesses of commen¬ 
tators lean to many discrepancies. 
The Septuagint, no mean authority, 
supported in a great degree by Jose- 
phus and the Samaritan version, as¬ 
signs to the period in the 10th and 
11th of Genesis, from the Deluge 
to Abraham • • • Years 1257 

from Abraham to Jacob •• 290 

Sojourn in Egypt per Exodus 430 
Departure to Solomon • 873 

Solomon to Christ • 1156 

3906 

instead of 2348, by the Vulgate. 
Taken thus, the Jewish history em¬ 
braces all the demands of the astrono¬ 
mical records, and the combined pre¬ 
tensions of general ancient history, 
while 1831 added to 3906, gives 5737 
years since the deluge. Then, if we 
look for the physical cause, it will be 
found that the Perihelion, now in 10 
degrees of Capricorn, (having a 
period of 20,900 years,) crossed the 
Equator 5800 years ago, when the 
translation of the ocean from the 
northern to the southern hemisphere, 
would necessarily produce those 
wrecks of countries, and great 
changes which the record implies, for 
all history concurs in describing a 
deluge, and science demands it3 re¬ 
currence every 10,450 years. 

Diodorus Siculus, Tacitus, Celsus, 
the Emperor Julian, &c., describe 
the Jews as Cretans, who settled in 
Idumea, so called from Mount Ida, 
in Crete, and hence the name of 
Judea. They also record, that a 
contagious leprosy breaking out in 
Egypt, Amenophis and Ramesis 
drove all the deceased into the de¬ 
serts of Idumea, where their chief 
was Moies, a former priest of Osiris, 
and under his institutions they final¬ 
ly settled themselves in Judea. Their 
exclusive ordinations and tenacity in 
maintaining them, drew on them the 
special hatred of the various ambi¬ 
tious conquerors of the East; and 
the Romans, in particular, extermi¬ 
nated them with remorseless cruelty, 
till they expelled them from the dis¬ 
trict, and made them unintentional¬ 
ly, as itinerant traders, in general 
connexion, the merchants and mo¬ 
ney-dealers of the whole world. 
Their present numbers in all coun¬ 
tries must be immense. They are 
estimated at 4 millions in Europe, 2 


in America, 6 in Africa, and 12 in 
Asia. 

The modern Jews profess to date 
from the creation, but this confounds 
all chronology and history. But if, 
which is far more probable, their 
epoch was the deluge, then, as the 
year 1831 is their year 5591, so the 
epoch of the deluge would be 3760 
B. C., instead of 2348, as adopted by 
Usher, &c. This would expand the 
Jewish chronology, so as to embrace 
the pretensions of ancient history 
in general, and accord with ancient 
astronomical observations; wdiile, as 
the Perihelion crossed the equator in 
3970, we should have a physical 
cause for an event which all history 
confusedly records, and of which 
the earth’s surface affords incontes- 
tible proofs. The variation of 210 
years would arise partly from the 
waters, extending variously and re¬ 
tiring variously. The extension of 
15 or 1600 years is justified by con¬ 
ferring a suitable period on the great 
events recorded in the 10th and 11th 
chapters of Genesis, to all of which, 
the received chronology assigns but 
100 years. 

The year of the world, by the 
Alexandrian and Abyssinian ac¬ 
counts in 1831, is 7323. But the 
Jewish reckoning is 5591, doubtless 
from the flood. It is also 4932 of 
the Hindoo Calilug. 

The chronology of Newton is not 
insisted on. He fixes the founda¬ 
tions of Argos and Athens in 1080 ; 
but the received chronology assigns 
1856 to the first, and 1556 to the se¬ 
cond. Minos reigned, in Crete, in 
1400 ; and Theseus, in Attica, in 1234. 
Orpheus flourished, about 1280; and 
the Trojan war lasted from 1193 to 
1184. Homer and Hesiod lived about 
900, and the Olympiads began in 776. 
The Romans destroyed the inde¬ 
pendence of Greece by the taking of 
Corinth in 147 B. C., and in the se¬ 
cond year of the 158th Olympiad. 

All systems of chronology agiee 
that Cyrus took Babylon in 538 
B. C. 

The Jabal, Jubul, and Tubal-cain, 
of Genesis appear to be similar cha¬ 
racters to the Pan, Apollo, and Vul- ' 
can, of the Greek Mythology. La¬ 
ntech, their father, and the son of 





209 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


Mathusael, or Methuselah, was de¬ 

scended from Cain, by chap, iv., and 
from Seth, by chap, v., which latter 
makes Lamech the father of Noah, 
consequently the fathers of the arts, 
as Noah was their brother, were 
drowned in their brother’s flood. 

The Jews were of three parties, 
the Hierosolymites or people of Je¬ 
rusalem, who claimed to have the 
only temple; the Samaritans, who 
occupied the district of the ten dis¬ 
persed tribes, and had a temple of 
their own, and their own version of 
the scriptures; the Hellenist, or Greek 
and Egyptian Jews, who,had a 
temple at Bubastis, called the Onion. 

It happened that no Greek writer 
quoted the Jews or their histories; 
and Josephus assigns, as a reason, 
that Theopompus, a Greek historian, 
who proposed to notice them, went 
mad, and discovered his crime in a 
dream ; and that Theodectus, a great 
dramatist, who noticed them, was 
struck blind, and recovered his sight 
only by penance. Other Greek wri¬ 
ters therefore took warning ! 

Berosus, an ancient Chaldean, re¬ 
lates that Xixutor, tenth King of 
Chaldea, was warned by the god of 
the country to build himself an ark, 
to escape a deluge. Its length was 
5 stadia, and width 2, i. e. 3000 feet 
and 1200 feet. He launched it on 
the Euxine, and took in his relations, 
and birds and beasts. The flood 
abated and his vessel settled on 
Ararat; before which, Berosus re¬ 
lates the particulars of his sending 
forth birds. This account was pro¬ 
bably copied from the Jews. The 
Jewish ark was 300 cubits by 50, 
and, if great cubits of 11 feet, 3300 
feet by 550, and 330 feet high. 

BufFon thinks that the Grecian 
and Hebrew deluges were the same, 
and arose from the Atlantick and 
Bosphorus bursting into the valley 
of the Mediterranean. In truth, the 
Black Sea appears to have drained 
the channel, which anciently ran 
from the Caspian to the Baltick ; 
and Dr. Clarke insists, at length, on 
the certainty of this rupture between 
the Black Sea and the sea of Mar¬ 
mora. 

Sir W. Jones believes Bacchus to 
bo the Rama of the Hindoos, a great 
conqueror, law-giver, and improver 


of navigation and commerce. The 
Greeks called him the god of Wine. 

The Arabs record a flood which 
destroyed Saba, their capital, and 
other towns, in early ages. It was 
caused by the breaking of a vast re¬ 
servoir, equal to a mountain, built by 
Saba, and is called the inundation of 
A1 Arem. 

The Chinese claim an extreme 
antiquity; but the reports of their 
literature coming to us through Po¬ 
pish missionaries and prejudiced 
travellers, who pervert or mistake, it 
is difficult to arrive at the truth. 
Their physiognomy indicates that 
they are of the Tartar origin, or va¬ 
riety. It seems agreed that Fo-hee, 
their first emperor, reigned about the 
vear 2950; and, from that time, their 
histories give a regular succession of 
emperors and events. Yao, who 
flourished about the year 2357, is 
celebrated for his virtues and wis¬ 
dom, and is said to be the author of 
his own history, as given in their 
chronicles, his reign having lasted 
102 years. 

From Fo-hee to Shun, was 5C0 
years; from Yu to Kie, was 387 
years; from Tching-tang to Sheoo- 
sin, was 612 years; from Yoo-Vang 
to Nang-Vang, was 808 years; from 
Nang-Vang to Cong-tee. was 105 
years. 

The Phoenicians, or the Philistines 
of the Jewish chronicles, invented 
writing, arithmetick, weights and 
measures, navigation, glass-making, 
and many other important arts. 

The Phoenicians extended their 
trade and language to all the coasts 
of the Mediterranean, and esta¬ 
blished colonies at Carthage, Gades, 
and the coasts of Spain. 

Sanchoniathon, the Phoenician 
historian, who wrote about 1150, 
calls the first pair Protogenus and 
AEon, and traces them down to 
Thoth, the Egyptian Mercury, but 
does not notice any intervening flood. 
He relates that the seventh genera¬ 
tion discovered the use of iron, which 
Moses ascribes to Tubal Cain, the 
son of Lamech, the 7th or 9th gene¬ 
ration, and brother of Noah; but 
Sanchoniathan does not speak of 
the flood in which, according to 
Moses, Tubal Cain and Noah’s 




s;o 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


other brothers, Jubal and Jabal, 
were drowned. 

Sanchoniathon, the earliest pro¬ 
fane writer, assigns ten generations 
like the Jews to the early ages. He 
calls them A5on, Genos', Phox, Li- 
ban, Usou, Halieus, Chrisor, Tech- 
nites, Agrove, and Amine. As he 
wrote at Beritus, in Phoenicia, and 
does not refer to the Jews, he is sup- 
osed to have lived before Moses, 
ut the received chronology makes 
him 200 years later. He quotes the 
Egyptian Thoth, who lived 800 
years before him. 

These earliest recorded Names are 
as under , and merit consideration :— 

Genesis, chap. v. 
Sanchoniathon. Genesis, chap. iv. if Chronicles. 

iEon.Adam.Adam 

Genos.Cain.Seth 

Phox.Enoch - • • - Enos 

Liban.Irad.Cainan 

Usou.Mehujael • Malialaleel 

Halieus.Methusael Jared 

Chrisor.Lamech • • Enoch 

Technites • C Jabal •• • • - Methuselah 

Agrove-• •• < Jubal.Lamech 

Amine • •• • ( Tubal Cain.Noah. 

Ninus and Semiramis were war¬ 
like sovereigns of Assyria, who, by 
large standing armies of nearly two 
millions of fighting men, overran 
central Asia to the Indus. Ninus 
left his wife guardian of his son, and 
she extended her conquests into 
Egypt and Ethiopia; but, in an ex¬ 
pedition against India, she was to¬ 
tally routed by Strabobates, the king; 
and, after a reign of 40 years, she re¬ 
signed to her son. In their time 
Nineveh was built and adorned, as 
a rival to Babylon. They flourished 
about the year 2150. Besides their 
vast armies, they had 10,600 armed 
chariots, and fleets of fighting ships; 
while other kings brought nearly 
equal forces into the field, and terri¬ 
ble slaughters covered this garden of 
the world. The empire lasted 1400 
ears ; but, in 771, was overthrown 
y a conspiracy of three viceroys, 
who divided it into the three king¬ 
doms of Assyria, Babylon, and Me¬ 
dia. Such are the accounts of the 
Greek and Roman historians. The 
Assyrian kingdom, 150 years after, 
was conquered by the others, and 
Nineveh destroyed. 

The name Babel, or Babylon, 
meant the City of God. The Per¬ 


sians refer its foundation to Tama- 
rath. Alexander found in it celestial 
observations for 1903 years. Hero¬ 
dotus makes no mention of the Nim¬ 
rod of the Jews. 

The Jews were in possession ol 
Canaan from about 1100, the age of 
Samuel, and Saul, to 721, when 10 
of their tribes were dispersed, and the 
other two tribes maintained them¬ 
selves till 587, when the kingdom of 
Judah was overthrown by Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar. Cyrus restored them in 
536; but they were a province of the 
Persian empire till 332, and then a 
province of the kingdom of Syria, till 
that kingdom merged in the Roman 
empire, under which they were 
finally expelled the country in 70, 
A. C. 

Moses, the Jewish legislator, 
headed them in their departure from 
Egypt about 1491; the epoch of the 
building of Thebes, and the intro¬ 
duction of letters by Cadmus. 

The Samaritan Jews, or kingdom 
of Israel, recognised, as the basis of 
their religion, only the Pentateuch, 
and rejected the rest, reading the 
Book of Judges as Apocryphal. The 
Christians, from the time of the fa¬ 
thers of the Romish church, recog¬ 
nise the whole Jewish history as of 
divine inspiration. 

The Canaan of the twelve tribes 
extended from lat. 31° 15' to 33° 5', 
or 130 miles long; and, from longi¬ 
tude, 35° to 36° east, or 45 miles 
wide. The two tribes of Judah and 
Benjamin were about 40 miles long 
and 30 wide. Samaria lay 40 miles 
north of Jerusalem. 

The whole kingdom of the Jews 
lasted only 120 years; of Israel, se¬ 
parately, 246 years longer; and of 
Judah 370 years; and both were then 
merged in the Babylonian empire, 
then in the Persian, the Macedonian, 
Roman, Saracen, and Turkish em¬ 
pires. Egypt was independent till 
569 B. C. from the earliest ages, and 
then was merged in the same em¬ 
pires. 

The Island of Atalantis is described 
by Plato, in his Timaeus, as of vast 
extent and population, having exist¬ 
ed somewhere in the Atlantick, but , 
was swallowed or absorbed by an 
earthquake. Many Hindoo legends 

















ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


211 


point to the circumstance; and 
Whitehurst quotes, in proof, the ge¬ 
ology of the coasts of Ireland. 

The Arundelian Marbles, or Mar¬ 
mora Oxoniensis , were, with other 
Grecian antiquities, collected by Dr. 
W. Petty, in the reign of James I., 
at the expense of the Earl of Arundel, 
yhe whole consisted of 37 statues, 
128 busts, and 250 inscriptions, be¬ 
sides gems, altars, &c. The Earl’s 
grandson presented the inscriptions 
to the University of Oxford. Dean 
Prideaux published them in a folio 
called Marmora Oxoniensis; and 
other accounts, by Mattaire and 
Chandler, have since appeared. The 
Parian Chronicle is in capitals, with¬ 
out spaces or stops. In one of them 
the parties swear to a treaty “by 
Eartn, Sun, Mars, Martial Minerva, 
Diana, Hesther Sipylene, Apollo in 
Pandi. Venus Stralonicus, and all 
the other gods and goddesses.” On 
the tomb of a Phoenician it is stated 
that “ he and his wife are with the 
blessed in Elysiumhence, the doc¬ 
trine of a future state seems to have 
been familiar with the early Greeks. 
It seems to have been engraved 
about 170 years B. C. The second 
epoch states as follows:—“Since 
Deucalion reigned at Parnassus, in 
Lycorea, Cecrops reigning at Athens, 
1310 years.” Epoch 4 states, “ Since 
a deluge happened in the days of 
Deucalion, and he fled from the rains 
out of Lycorea, taking refuge with 
Cranaus; and built the Temple of 
Phyxion and Olympian Jupiter, and 
offered sacrifices ©f preservation, 
1265 years, Cranaus reigning at 
Athens.” This flood in Thessaly, 
then, was in 1435 B. C., but the de¬ 
luge of Moses was 2348; and, hence, 
there is no reason for confounding 
those events. Moses died 1452, 17 
years before Deucalion’s flood. The 
same inscription also tells us, that 
the first ship from Egypt arrived in 
Greece in 1512 B. C., i. e. about 14 
years before the Israelites left Egypt. 

The Greeks spread from Greece, 
through all the Islands, to the coasts 
of Asia Minor, to Sicily, Lower Ita¬ 
ly, and on the coasts of the Euxine. 
In Africa, they founded Cyrene; in 
Gaul, Marseilles; and to the west, 
Rhoda and Emporia. The Macedo¬ 
nian conquests extended their lan¬ 
guage into the interiour of Asia. 


Iron was said to have been disco¬ 
vered owing to the forests on Mount 
Ida being burnt by lightning, about 
1500 years B. C. But Moses refers it 
to Tubal Cain, the son of Lamech, 
and one of the brothers of Noah, who, 
with Jubal and Jabal, the other sons 
of Lamech, must have been drown- 
in the flood 800 years previously; 
though Moses speaks of their arts as 
continuous, and describes them as 
the fathers of all who practised their 
arts. The discovery of iron would 
effect n social revolution, equal to 
that of gunpowder. 

Some suppose that the Canaries 
are fragments of that extensive isl¬ 
and of Atalantis, which Plato, in his 
Timseus, says was absorbed by the 
sea, 9000 years before his time. The 
sea is said to be shallow in that vi¬ 
cinity. Pliny mentions traditions of 
the irruption of the Atlantick into 
the basin of the Mediterranean. 

The Bacchus of the Greeks had 
some resemblance to Moses, if they 
were not the same. Orpheus, about 
1200, calls him Misesj (saved from 
the Nile), educates him in Arabia, 
makes him pass dry through the Rea 
Sea and two rivers in India, com¬ 
mand the Sun to stand still, cause 
wine to spring by striking the ground, 
and engrave his laws on two tables 
of marble. The Egyptian histories, 
cited by Josephus, Clement, Origen, 
&c., arc silent on the subject. 

The Assyrian is the earliest re¬ 
corded empire, that of Bacchus 
wants records. It began with Ni- 
nus, and ended with Sardanapalus. 
It was united to the Medes, from 
Arbaces to Astyages, and then to the 
Persians, from Cyrus to Darius. 

The Argonautick expedition to 
Colchis, in search of the Golden 
Fleece, under Jason, begins now to 
be regarded as a fable; and many 
learned wrilers doubt whether the 
Siege of Troy was other than a po¬ 
etical fiction of Homer. The only 
circumstance that gives it credence, 
is Alexander’s recognition of it, by 
his visit to the tomb of Achilles. 
Others think there was no such poet 
as Homer, and that his poems were 
the work of Thales, who first pro¬ 
mulgated them in writing. 

The Zodiack of Tentyra, now at 
Paris, is a spiral, beginning with Leo, 





212 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


and ending with Cancer, in a square 
of 7 feet 9 inches. It is crossed at 
right angles by lines, which pass 
through Taurus and Scprpio, and 
through Leo and Aquarius; then 
the Equinoctial and Solstitial points. 
Hence, a sign and a half gives about 
3240 years. But Pisces has since 
advanced through Aries, so the pre¬ 
cession is full 2£ signs, or 2160 X 2h 
= 5400 years for the age of this 
Zodiack, or 3130 B. C., which cor¬ 
responds exactly with age of the 
Indian Observatory. 

It hence appears that the Zodia¬ 
cal signs are of extreme antiquity, 
and that the first in order was Leo. 
The sphere, and its constellations, 
with the names of the planets, ap¬ 
pear nevertheless to be of Cretan ori¬ 
gin, and the author of the nomencla¬ 
ture, palpably, had Cretan and Gre¬ 
cian personages in his mind. All 
history fixes these personages as 
living in the ages just preceding the 
Trojan war, for the constellations do 
not record that war, or its heroes, 
but they include Persius, Hercules, 
the Argonauts, &c. &c. of the im¬ 
mediately preceding age. 

The celestial globe was divided 
into constellations after the age of 
Persius, and also after the Argonauts, 
who built Mycenae, perhaps, about 
1200 B. C. 


The Ancients assigned the 12 major 
Gods and Goddesses to the 12 signs 
of the Zodiack. 


i 


Aries . 


Taurus. 


Gemini ••••••••■ 


Cancer. 


Leo. 


Virgo . 


Libra . 


Scorpio. 


Sagittarius. 


Capricorn. 


.Aquarius. 


Pisces . 



Saturn governed and VS 

Jupiter..J 

Mars. Y .iK 

Venus.£5.=0: 

Mercury.n.^ 

The Moon. 

The Sun. 

The Egyptian Zodiac commenced 
with $\, tne sign of the Sun. The 
Moon, or 53 , precedes it. Mercury, 


i. e. n and ttj?, is next to these, cor¬ 
responding with his elongation. Ve¬ 
nus next, i. e. # and each way; 
then Mars, Yand 1t\, then Jupiter, 
X and \, and, lastly, Saturn ££ 
and Y$. 

Crete, or Candia, always deserves 
to be mentioned with respect, as the 
nursery of civilization, a circum¬ 
stance favoured by its insular posi¬ 
tion, the fineness of its climate, and 
the fertility of the soil. Among the 
earliest monarchs were Rhadaman- 
thus and Minos, whose laws and 
policy were so much praised. The 
Cretans lost their independence 
when the lust of conquest was in¬ 
dulged bv the Romans, about 50 B. 
C. In the age of the Trojan war, 
Crete was said to contain 100 cities, 
which, a modem traveller says, may 
all be still traced. 

The stars were classed into con¬ 
stellations about the year 1200, for 
the figures include all the heroes of 
the previous age, some of the Argo¬ 
nauts, but none of the Trojan heroes. 
The same systematizer also gave 
names to the planets, and adopted 
those of recent celebrity in the Cretan 
court as Kings; Saturn, Jupiter, Vul¬ 
can, &c. Astrology sanctified these 
names, and poetry soon deified them. 
Their numerous progeny arose from 
the ascendancy of these planets at 
births, and a man born when Jupiter 
was strongest, and Cancer ascend¬ 
ing would be called a son of Jupiter 
and Latona, or of Jupiter and Diana. 
The Astrologers were at once the 
priests, poets, and statesmen; and, 
hence all the fables and superstitions 
about these names given to the pla¬ 
nets and stars. They afterwards 
travelled among eastern astronomers 
and astrologers. 

The Greeks had a story that Orion 
was the son of Hyreus, and formed 
at his request by Jupiter, Neptune, 
and Mercury, after he had entertain¬ 
ed them, he being old and childless. 
Orion is named in the Book of Job, 
which is believed to be of Chaldean 
origin, and as old as Genesis. 

The ancient mythology made 
Apollo, the Sun, brother of Diana, 
the Moon, merely because and 
adjoined each other. 

The Argonautic expedition, under 
I Jason, to Colchis, took place, if not 



























ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 213 


a fable, about 1250 B. C. It affords 
names for constellations. 

Saturn appears to have been King 
of Crete, in whose time Iron was 
discovered on Ida, by the conflagra¬ 
tion of its woods. Jupiter was his 
son, and successor. Mars was a 
Cretan hero of the same age. Venus 
was a beautiful Cyprian, who mar¬ 
ried Vulcan, who wrought the new 
iron mines, and made iron imple¬ 
ments. Mercury was Hermes Tris- 
rnegistus, to whom the age was in¬ 
debted for the recent discovery of 
letters. The Sun, or Baal, had many 
names, but at this time the name of 
an accomplished native of Delos, 
Apollo, was assigned. The Moon, 
also, had many names, but, in the 
Cretan Vocabulary, she was called 
Diana. The virtues and powers 
ascribed to the planets by astrology 
were soon, by association, referred to 
the name and the persons; while 
superstition, obscure history, priest¬ 
craft, and poetry, in 2 or 300 years, 
raised on this simple basis, the 
amusing fa brick of the Heathen My¬ 
thology. In these ages, even as at 
this day, in eastern courts, the astro¬ 
loger was also priest and statesman, 
and the reigning planet, at the birth 
of a man, or at the founding of a City 
or Temple, was the father or genius ; 
hence, the apparent numerous pro¬ 
geny of these gods, and their multi¬ 
plication in different persons and 
places. 

Many confusions in ancient history 
were thus created by astrology. Lu- ■ 
cian says, that Aesculapius was call¬ 
ed the son of Mars, merely because 
Mars was lord of his ascendant; and 
so another was the son of Jupiter, 
because Sagittarius was ascending 
at his nativity. Cities too had their 
nativities, and hence the lord of the 
ascendant was their tutelar deity, and 
his or her worship adopted in a tan¬ 
gible form. The first stone of a city, 
or great structure, laid when Cancer 
was ascending, would render the 
Moon, as Diana, Cybele, Isis, &c. 
their future goddess. The hour in 
which a victory was gained, which 
founded a nation, was also, to an as¬ 
trologer, a means of setting a figure, 
and fixing the lord of the ascendant; 
and thence the tutelar deity of that 
nation! and, on this, an astrologer 
and poet, aided by the celestial globe,, 


and the approaches, and recessions, 
and aspects of the planets, would 
raise a story to astonish the vulgar, 
and all men unacquainted with the 
art. At this day adepts in astrology 
set figures, even at the launching of 
a ship, and pretend to tell its fortune; 
and, when astrologers were states¬ 
men, and the people reverenced the 
art, no doubt the astrologers fixed 
the ruling planet, and the deity of 
the place, whose name was varied 
according to the language of the peo¬ 
ple. Half the mysteries of ancient 
history, and all those of mythology, 
may thus be explained. The fables 
about the heathen gods are such, 
therefore, only from ignorance of 
this key, and astrology ; and the ce¬ 
lestial globe would tell, in a moment, 
how the gods (t. e. the planets,} and 
the female constellations, and the 
goddesses, (that is, Venus and the 
Moon,) and the male constellations, 
were guilty of so many intrigues, and 
parents of so many heroes, at a time 
when astrologers were statesmen, 
chief-priests, &c. 

Astrology perverts and misapplies 
a plain principle. There is a certain 
chance that any event may happen. 
Random guesses would not satisfy, 
but the stars afforded rules for guess¬ 
ing, and then, by following the rules, 
the astrologer ceased to guess. But, 
as a certain number of probable 
events must happen, so, as the prog- 
nosticks were founded on the stars, 
these were then said to rule the 
events. What follies and odd things 
have this mistake created! 

Ogyges, about 1356, was the first 
king of Athens. Cecrops, the next 
noted king, was an Egyptian, and 
reigned about 1556. Theseus reigned 
in 1300. 

Cyrus, the founder of the Persian 
empire, lost his life in a battle with 
a Scythian tribe, in 529 B. C. But 
Xenophon says he died in peace. 

The chief magistrate of the Atheni¬ 
an republiek was called the archon ; 
and, latterly, they were nine in num¬ 
ber, chosen annually, and serving as 
an executive government. 

There were nine archons at Athens, 
and the first was called King; the 
second Archonte, or Judge; the third 
Polemarque, or Generalissimo; and 







214 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


the others, Thesmothetes, or Law¬ 
makers, chosen by ballot. 

The Areopagus, or Senate-house, 
was built on a hill, in 1490 B. C. 

The Turks call Athens, Setines. It 
acquired note about 1508 B. C. and 
was, for 487 years, under 17 kings. 
In 594, it became a republick. In 403, 
it was taken by Lysander, for the 
Lacedaemonians. In 87, it was taken 
by Sylla, for the Romans; and, in 
1455, by Mahomet II. Its famous 
buildings were the Areopagus, the 
Lyceum, the Academy, the Portico, 
and the Temples. The assured in¬ 
dependence of Greece promises its 
revival in 1830. 

Athens was founded by Cecrops, 
1556 B. C. iEgeus governed 1283. 
Theseus, 1235. Codrus, 1091. Medon, 
1070. Draco, 623. Solon, 594. Pisis- 
tratus, 560. Pericles, 441. Demetrius, 
317. Poliorcetes, 300. Taken by 
Sylla, 86. 

Sparta founded by Lelex, 1302 B. 
C. Lycurgus governed 884. Theo- 
pompus, 770. Leonidas, 491. 

Corinth built, 1520. Danaus reign¬ 
ed, 1485. Periander, 630. 

Argos founded by Inachus in 1856. 

Thebes founded by Cadmus, 1493. 
CEdipus reigned, 1266. Taken by 
Alexander, 336. 

Lacedeemonia and Attica were the 
most renowned of the Grecian states; 
the first for military prowess, and the 
other for naval power, arts, and lite¬ 
rature. Lycurgus arranged the se¬ 
vere institutions which gave charac¬ 
ter to one; and Solon, in 594, esta¬ 
blished those democratick institu¬ 
tions which drew forth all the genius 
of the people of the other; but they 
were too popular to last. 

In 431, a dispute between Corinth 
and Corcyra, or Corfu, led to the in¬ 
terference of Athens and Lacedae¬ 
mon, and brought on the first Pelo¬ 
ponnesian war, in which all the 
Grecian states were mingled; but, 
in eight years, it ended in the triumph 
of Athens. A second struggle en¬ 
sued ; and, in 404, Athens was taken 
and dismantled. 

The retreat of the 10,000 Greeks, 
under Xenophon, arose thus,—they 
were mercenaries of Cyrus the 

f munger, and, in marching on Baby- 
on, in 401, his army was defeated; 


but the Greeks kept in a body, and 
retreated through Asia to Thrace. 

Sparta, so celebrated in Grecian 
history, was near the modern town 
of Misitra, in the Morea, but no ves¬ 
tige of it above ground has been visi¬ 
ble for some hundred years. 

Corinth, one of the most splendid 
cities in Greece, owed its advantages 
to commerce ; and, to its luxury, we 
are indebted for the Corinthian order, 
in which were constructed the Grot¬ 
tos of the Muses, a Theatre and Sta¬ 
dium, a superb Temple to Neptune, 
and another to Venus. 

Thebes, once the celebrated capital 
of Boeotia, has, by the Turks, been 
called Stives, and the country is call¬ 
ed Stramulippa. Thebes was said 
to be built by Cadmus, an Egyptian 
emigrant, who called it after the 
Egyptian Thebes, and he introduced 
among the Greeks his alphabet of 16 
characters. The fables connected 
with his history are all derived from 
a mixture of the superstition of priest¬ 
craft, with ignorant mistakes about 
astrological associations of men with 
the ruling planets, and aspects of 
planets in their nativities. The story 
of Jupiter and the Bull, connected 
with the early history of this district, 
means nothing more than Jupiter 
being in the sign Taurus, probably 
when Cadmus was born, when he 
landed, or when he laid the founda¬ 
tion-stone of Thebes, was in some 
aspect with the planet Venus. 

The Amphictyonick Council was 
a congress of representatives from 
13 cities in Greece. 

The Greeks adopted their Olym¬ 
piads in 776 B. C.; and previously 
their histories are jumbled in confu¬ 
sion. 

The Romans had no chronology 
till a late period; and, hence, no cer¬ 
tainty attaches to their history for 3 
or 400 years. 

The battle of Arbela, which ruin¬ 
ed Darius, was fought Oct. 1, 331 
B, C • 

At the death of Alexander his ge¬ 
nerals were thus situated:—Perdicas 
and Leonatus were regents; Antipa- 
tor and Crateras governed in Greece; 
Ptolemy held Egypt; Lysymachus 
had Thrace; Eumenes, Cappadocia, 
&c. Antigonus, Lycia, and Pen 





ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


eestes governed Persia ; Python, 
Media; and Seleucus, Syria and 
Babylon. They established king¬ 
doms, and some of them founded 
dynasties ; but for the most part were 
military tyrants, and died violent 
deaths. The mother, wives, bro¬ 
ther, and children of Alexander, 
were all murdered by them. 

The Hindoos recognise the inva¬ 
sion of Alexander under the name of 
Mahadukoit Kounha, and call him 
the great robber and murderer. 

The brilliant epoch of Grecian his¬ 
tory was from about tOO to 300, or 
the period of Jewish history de¬ 
scribed by Nehemiah and the Apo¬ 
crypha. But the history of neither 
corroborates the other, though so 
near; and no Greek writer of the 
classical ages speaks of the achieve¬ 
ments of the Jews, though Homer 
was contemporary w’ith David and 
Solomon. The art of printing has 
made nations acquainted with each 
other, yet the Greeks w'ere travellers. 

Rome w r as founded 753 B. C. by 
Romulus. Numa Pompilius began 
to reign 715. Tullus Hostilius, 672. 
Ancus Martius, 640. Tarquinius 
Priscus, 616. Servius Tullius, 578. 
Tarquinius Supcrbus, 534. First 
Consuls, 509. Lartius, Dictator, 
498. Cincinnatus, Dictator, 456. 
Sylla, Dictator, 82. Julius Caesar, 
Dictator, 48. Octavius, Emperor, 
31 B. C. Tiberius, 14 A. C. Cali¬ 
gula, 37. Claudius, 51. Nero, 54. 
Galba, 68. Otho and Yitellius, 69. 
Vespasian, 69. Titus, 79. Domi- 
tian, 81. Nerva, 96. Trajan, 98. 
Adrian, 117. Antonius, 138. Corn- 
modus, 180. Severus, 193. Cara- 
calla, 211. Alexander, 222. Gordian, 
238. Philip, 244. Decius, 249. Gal- 
lus, 251. Valerian, 254. Gallienus, 
260. Aurelian, 270. Probus, 276. 
Diocletian, 284. Constantine, 306. 
Constantius, 337. Julian, 361. Jo¬ 
vian, 363. Division of the Empire, 
364, between Valentinian and Va- 
lens. Rome and West, under Gra- 
tian and Valentinian II., 375. Ho- 
norius, 395. Valentinian III., 424. 
Majorian, 457. Severus, 461. Ana- 
themius. 467. Augustulus, 474. The 
Western Empire Dissolved, in 476, 
by Odoacer, King of the Heruli. 

Though the Greeks and Romans 
stigmatized other nations as barba¬ 


__215 

rians, and their misrepresentations 
are too generally received, yet the 
aggressions, ambition, and policy of 
the Romans in playing off' nation 
against nation, and employing one 
to conquer another, cannot be suffi- 
cienly condemned. The union of 
nations to assert their own inde¬ 
pendence was just, and a philoso¬ 
pher will not condemn those asso¬ 
ciations of the northern tribes, which 
drove their oppressors into Italy, and 
even followed them there, though it 
might suit the Romans to call such 
patriots barbarians. The Romans 
provoked those attacks, and for all 
the consequences they alone are to 
blame. 

The fortune of Rome was singu¬ 
lar-. It was founded by banditti 753 
B. C.; from the year 100 B. C. to 
300 A. C., the persevering policy of 
these insatiable bandits ruled the 
world by the sword; and from 300 
to 1500, Rome governed all Europe 
by spiritual power, which is still ac¬ 
knowledged by half its states, and 
its language still reigns over all 
learning even after 2583 years. 

The battle of Cannae, so bloody 
and so fatal to the Romans, and so 
useless to the Carthaginians, was 
fought 216 B. C. Hannibal com¬ 
manded, on one side, 50,000 Afri¬ 
cans, Gauls, and Spaniards; and 
Paulus iEmilius 88,000Romans, and 
not more than 4000 of the Romans 
escaped. Hannibal sent three bushels 
of rings of the Roman knights, to 
Carthage. 

Agrarian laws, for the equal divi¬ 
sion of publick lands among the citi¬ 
zens of Rome, were first passed 486 
B. C., and renewed 20 times, but in 
vain. 

40,000 Romans were slain on the 
Allia, 390 B. C.. by the Gauls, under 
Brennus, a British prince. 

There were 7 kings of Rome, from 
Romulus, 753 B. C., to Tarquin Su¬ 
perbus, 509, when Brutus and Colla- 
tinus became consuls. 

Carthage, the commercial rival of 
Tyre, and which, unlike Tyre, fool¬ 
ishly aimed at dominion as well as 
commerce, was built in the 9th cen¬ 
tury, B. C. They ravished the do¬ 
minion of the sea from the Phoeni¬ 
cians, and maintained it for 5 or 600 
years. Dido, a Tyrian princess, set- 




216 


ANCIENT HISTORY, &c. 


tied herself at Carthage, owing to 
differences with her brother Pygma¬ 
lion, and, upon an isthmus of a Pe¬ 
ninsula, which formed a bay, she 
laid the foundations of Carthage. It 
was divided into three parts, Byrsa, 
or the city; Megara, or the suburbs; 
and Cothon, the port, the entrance 
to which was but 70 feet broad. The 
outer harbour was for merchants’ 
shipping, and the inner for ships of 
war. In 2 or 300 years it was 23 
miles round, and contained 700,000 
inhabitants; a passage in Plautus 
proves that their language was iden¬ 
tical with the ancient Irish, as it can 
be read at once by any lettered Irish¬ 
man. Wealth and property were 
the only foundations of rank and 
power, and from this class two chief 
magistrates and legislators were an¬ 
nually elected. They worshipped 
Saturn, perhaps, because that planet 
ruled either at the birth of Dido, or 
at her landing on the coast; they 
also worshipped Baal, or the Sun, 
and Urania, the genius of Astrology. 
They traded through Africa, round 
the Mediterranean, and into the At¬ 
lantic^, for they were masters of the 
Spanish peninsula. Rome and Car¬ 
thage quarrelled about their respec¬ 
tive acendency in the Mediterranean, 
and the first punick war, of 24 years, 
began in 264 B. C., and the second 
punick war, of 17 years, began in 
218, the third began in 149; and, in 
146, Carthage was totally destroyed 
by Scipio, to his eternal disgrace. 
Gracchus began to restore it in 122, 
and in another 200 years it again 
became a considerable city, but, 
A. D. 431, it was utterly destroyed 
by Geneserick, the leader of the 
Vandals. Besides Spain, and pro¬ 
bably Ireland and the Canaries, the 
Carthaginians held in the Mediterra¬ 
nean, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, and 
the Balearick Islands. Their attempt 
to conquer Sicily diminished their 
power, and drew on them the fears 
and jealousy of the Romans. All 
commercial people have, in like man¬ 
ner, been ruined by a passion for 
territorial aggrandizement, partly 
with a view to the corrupting pa¬ 
tronage of foreign governments, and 
partly for the purpose of forcing the 
sale of their commodities. Of the 
discoveries and science of the Car¬ 
thaginians we have no knowledge, 
because we receive our accounts of 


them through their inveterate foes, 
the Roman authors. 

Two of the most atrocious acts in 
the history of human crimes were 
the siege and destruction of Tyre by 
Alexander, and of Jerusalem by Ti¬ 
tus. Histories which laud such 
monsters, ought to be consigned to 
the flames. ' 

Caesar’s Commentaries were writ¬ 
ten by Hirtius, according to some; 
and by Oppius, according to others. 

Voltaire, in his Philosophihal Dic¬ 
tionary, says that the word Gauls 
was a Roman corruption of the 

Welches. 

Nero set fire to Rome on the 19th 
of July, 64. The fire continued 6 
days, and consumed three quarters 
of that fine city. ^ , . 

Julius Caesar usurped the supreme 
power, in 705, of Rome, or 48 B. C.; 
and, from that time till 475, there 
were 64 Roman emperors, the last 
bein» Augustulus. Their reigns ave¬ 
raged 8 years; and out of the 64, 45 
were monsters of crime and vice. 

The following was the Fate of ths 
Coesars, in 300 years. 

44 B. C. Julius, assassinated.. 

14 A. C. Augustus. 

37 Tiberius poisoned. 

41 Caligula, assassinated. 

54 Claudius. 

68 Nero, killed himself. 

— Galba, murdered. 

69 Otho, ditto. 

— Vitellius, ditto. 

— Vespasian. e *. 

81 Titus. 

96 Domitian, killed. 

98 Nerva. ", 

Trajan. 

138 Adrian. 

161 Antonius Pius. 

180 Marcus Aurelius. 

193 Commodus, 

— Pertinax, murdered. 

— Dedius Julianus, ditto. 

210 Severus. 

212 Geta, murdered. 

217 Caracalla, ditto. 

218 Macrenus, ditto. 

222 Heliogabulus, ditto. 

235 Alexander, ditto. 

237 Maximinus, ditto. 

238 Balbinus, ditto. 3 

— Pupianus, ditto. 




217 


MODERN HISTORY, &c. 


244 Gordians, murdered. 

249 Philip, ditto. 

251 Decius, ditto. 

253 Gallus, ditto. 

— Emilanus, ditto. 

260 Valerian, ditto. 

Gallienus, ditto. 

270 Claudius II., died of the 
plague. 

275 Aurehan, murdered. 

276 Tacitus, ditto. 

— Florianus, ditto. 

282 Probus. ditto. 

283 Marcus Aurelius, killed by 

lightning. 

284 Numerianus, murdered. 

2S5 Carenus, assassinated. 

293 Caurasius, ditto. 

What a consequence of undue 
power! what a picture of depravity 
m subjects ! what a lesson to ambi¬ 
tion ! 

In 305, Diocletian and Maximinus 
resigned, and thereby escaped the 
fate of 24 of their immediate prede¬ 
cessors ;—but in 

310 Maximinus was put to death. 

311 Maximinus Galerius died 

shamefully. 

312 Maxenlius, drowned. 

337 Constantine, died 

340 Constantine II. killed. 

350 Constans, murdered. 

353 Magnentius, killed himselfl 

354 Gallus, murdered. 

355 Julian, poisoned. 

364 Jovian, died. 

375 Valentinian, burst an artery. 

376 Theodosius, murdered. 

378 Valens, burnt. 

388 Maximus, killed. 

392 Valentinian II. strangled. 

394 Eugenius, murdered. 

395 Theodosius, died. 

The empire was then divided. 

Ancient History is considered 
as ending with the breaking up of the 
Roman empire in Italy, by the inva¬ 
sions of the northern nations, and 
the general conspiracy of the various 
conquered nations. These severally 
set up for themselves in various go¬ 
vernments, which remained unset¬ 
tled till the age of Charlemagne, 
from Which period authors in gene¬ 
ral date the commencement of Mo¬ 
dern History. Ancient History 
commenced, therefore, in the obscu¬ 
rity of tradition, between 1800 and 
1500 B. C. and ended about the year 


400 A. C., about 2000 years; and 
Modern began with Mahomet, or 
Charlemange, and has lasted about 
1200 or 1000 years, beginning almost 
in as great obscurity as ancient his¬ 
tory, owing to general ignorance. 


MODERN HISTORY. 

Modern History is marked chiefly 
by the extensive conquests of the Ma- 
homedans, or Saracens and Turks, 
by the resistance of the Christians, 
and by the wars between the Roman 
Catholick and the Protestant powers. 
For one or two centuries, wars al¬ 
ways were carried on to preserve a 
balance of power between the states, 
and prevent a general and oppressive 
monarchy. Latterly there have been 
bloody conflicts about civil liberty, 
between states free and states under 
arbitrary government; more recent¬ 
ly Russia has appeared at the head 
of that northern hive, which, 1500 
years ago, overran Europe. In Asia, 
the Mogul empire was founded by 
Genghis-Khan and Tamerlane, who 
overran Asia like Sesostris; but 
China has maintained its integrity 
for above 4000 years. 

The Chinese empire was divided, 
between 420 A. D. and 581, by an 
eruption of the Tartars, into the 
north and southern empires. It was 
re-united in 581, and so continued 
till 905, when the Tartars again ob¬ 
tained part of the empire till 1249, 
and the Moguls governed the whole 
till 1368. The Tartars were then 
driven out, and a Chinese dynasty 
continued till 1644, when the Mant- 
choo Tartars overran the empire, 
and, after, five reigns, continue, un¬ 
der Kia-King, to govern. The last 
emperor but one, Kien-long, reigned 
60 years, in great estimation, at 
home and abroad, and abdicated in 
1796, in favour of his son Kia-King. 

The Greeks knew nothing of the 
Chinese, and the Romans little, till 
Marcus Aurelius sent an embassy 
A. D. 166. In 530, the first silk¬ 
worms were brought from China to 
Italy. The Saracens penetrated into 
China, and actually took possession 
of Canton in 758; in 1211, Gengis- 
khan conquered, and added part of 
China to his vast empire. About 





218 


MODERN HISTORY - , &c. 


1510, European traders began to 
■visit Canton. At least 30 different 
embassies have proceeded from Eu¬ 
rope to Pekin, many of them splen¬ 
did and expensive, but the Chinese 
government received them as repre¬ 
sentatives of kings, sent to do ho¬ 
mage! 

Arabia never was conquered by 
any foreign nation. Its sands have 
been its security, and the poverty of 
the people has offered no temptation. 
Job was an Arab. Their power of 
story-telling is almost universal, 

Mahomet was born at Mecca in 
569, the year after the Abyssinian 
invasion, called the War of the Ele¬ 
phant ; in which the Arabs say the 
invaders were destroyed by stones 
from heaven, and a flood of the Red 
Sea. His father was Abdallah, and 
his mother Amina, both of good fa¬ 
mily, and great beauty. His grand¬ 
father, Motalleb, took charge of him, 
and died at the age of 110. His 
uncle, Abu Taleb, brought him up 
as his own son, and took him, with 
a caravan, to Egypt and Syria; and 
he afterwards served in a campaign 
under his uncle, who was com¬ 
mander, and also guardian of the 
Caaba. At 25, he married Cadiga, 
a rich and noble widow', and lived 
in opulence. The religions of the 
Arabs were the ancient Sabeanism, 
Jewish, and Christian. At 40, he 
announced himself a prophet, and 
taught the Unity of God in opposi¬ 
tion to the Trinity, and disclaimed 
the reverence which the Jews be¬ 
stowed on Ezra. His first converts 
were his wife, his cousin Ali, his ser¬ 
vant Zeid, and Abu Bekr, a man of 
distinction, who made five prose¬ 
lytes. He now r preached in publick, 
in the courts of the Caaba, the belief 
and worship of one God, and began 
to produce the Koran. He w r as join¬ 
ed by Hamza and Omar, but oppos¬ 
ed by the Koresh or Pagan priest¬ 
hood. A deputation of 75 came 
from Medina, and acknowledged 
him. The Koresh now sought nis 
life; and he fled, with Abu Bekr, to 
Medina, where 500 disciples met 
him. Here he adopted the kingly 
and sacerdotal office, established a 
mosque, and preached in it. He 
banished 700 of his opponents, and 
buried 700 alive, chiefly Jews, seizing 
their wealth. He soon after had an 


engagement with 1000 of the Koreish 
forces, and defeated them in the 
battle of Beber, in 623; after which 
he had 1000 warriors, and fought the 
battle of Ohud, but was defeated; 
and Medina was besieged by 12,000, 
and defended by 3000. The be¬ 
siegers being baffled, a 10 years’ 
peace w r as concluded. 

Two years after, he gained a vic¬ 
tory at Muta, over a large army of 
the eastern empire; and, in 629, he 
inarched with 10,000 men, took 
Mecca, and destroying the 360 idols 
in the Caaba, consecrated it to his 
religion called Islamism. In ano¬ 
ther year, all Arabia yielded to his 
pretensions. He now marched, with 
30,000 men, against the eastern em¬ 
pire ; and, securing peace by his ap¬ 
proach, he returned to Medina, and 
performed the Pilgrimage of the Va¬ 
lediction, with a train of 114,000 be¬ 
lievers. He was supposed to be 
poisoned by a Jew'ess, and died aged 
63, in 632, at Medina. The Mano- 
medans regard him as a man adorn¬ 
ed with every virtue, and as the 
reatest legislator the w'orld has pro- 
uced. He was succeeded by Abu 
Bekr, the father of his second wife, 
in w'hose arms he died; and the Ca¬ 
liph advanced into Syria, while Ca- 
led pursued victory to the Euphrates. 
In 634, Damascus was taken; and, 
on the same day, died Abu Bekr, 
who bequeathed the Caliphat to 
Omar. Soon after was fought the 
battle of Vermouth, in which 150,000 
Christians were slain, and all Syria 
became Mahomedan. They now 
invaded Egypt; and, in 641, the 
standard of Moslemism w r as estab¬ 
lished throughout that country. In 
the north and east they overran 
Persia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. 
In 643, Omar was assassinated in 
the mosque, at Medina. Othman 
succeeded in 644 ; and his general, 
Abdallah, subdued the north of Af¬ 
rica ; but, in 655, he was killed in a 
rebellion in his palace, and suc¬ 
ceeded by Ali, the second disciple, 
and vizier of Mahomet. The widow 
of the prophet headed a rebellion 
against Ali, and though she w r as 
defeated and taken prisoner, his 
reign was turbulent, and he was 
assassinated by a fanatick at Cufa. 
In spite of their broils this Mahome¬ 
dan, or Saracen empire, was, in 70 
years, extended from India to Sibe- 







__ MODERN H 

ria, and from Samarcand to the At- 
lantick ; while, in 704, they became 
masters of Spain and Portugal, and 
the empire exceeded in extent any 
recorded in history. In 760, A1 
Mansor removed the seat of empire 
to Bagdat; and, for 500 years, the 
caliphs made amends to science and 
literature, for the ravages of the fa- 
naticks who succeeded Mahomet. 

In 637, the Mahomedans first en¬ 
tered Africa, under Omar. In 650, 
they invaded Barbary. In 710, they 
overran Numidia and Lybia. In 973, 
Nigritia; and, in 1067, Lower Ethi¬ 
opia ; extending their faith to the 
Equator. 

Bagdat, the famous capital of the 
caliphs, was founded in 762, by Al 
Mansor, near the site of Seleucia, 
or New Babylon, on the Tigris, and 
about 50 miles from Babylon the 
Great, on the Euphrates. The des¬ 
pots of these countries built capitals, 
and peopled them at their pleasure. 
Old Babylon yielded to New. New 
to Ctesephon. This to Almadayen, 
and this to Bassora and Bagdat, 
which were successively built by 
Omar and Al Mansor. Bagdat was 
the capital of the sovereign C'aliphat, 
and the seat of science and the arts. 

In 1258, Bagdat, which, for 500 
years, had been the seat of luxury 
and civilization under the Abbasi- 
nian caliphs, was taken, plundered, 
and burnt, by Hulacu, at the head of 
an army of Tartars and Muscovites, 
and its men of science scattered over 
the world. It is still a fine city, and 
Bassora is its port, from which mer¬ 
chandise is brought in boats up the 
Tigris, and sent thence into the pro¬ 
vinces. 

In the 9th century there were six 
or seven caliphs, or Mahometan 
sovereigns of Bagdat, Syria, Cairo, 
Fez, Spain, &c; but, about 1180 Sal- 
adin sunk the title in that of Soudan 
or Sultan. 

The crusades are a memorable in¬ 
stance of the ascendency of priest¬ 
craft over the passions of mankind. 
About the middle of the eleventh cen¬ 
tury, Christian pilgrims found ac¬ 
cess to the holy land so difficult, that 
all Christendom was aroused by Pope 
Urban II., to march under the ban¬ 
ners of the cross towards Jerusalem. 
In the autumn of 1096, 2C 0,000 of 


:S TORY , &c._219 

these fanaticks advanced from all 
parts of Europe to Constantinople, 
under the command of a priest of 
Amiens, called Peter the Hermit. 
On their route they killed all Jews ; 
and the remnant which passed into 
Asia, were exterminated by Soly- 
man the Great; but, in the follow¬ 
ing year, no less than 100,000 horse 
and 600,000 foot passed the Bospho¬ 
rus, led by Godfrey, Hugh, Ray¬ 
mond, Bonemond, and Tancred, 
who defeated Solyman, and an army 
of 600,000 Asiaticks. In two years, 
they lost half a million ; but, taking 
Jerusalem by storm, they put all 
(except the Christians) to the sword, 
animated to this deed by Peter. God¬ 
frey was now made king of Jerusa¬ 
lem; and another army of 200,000 
soon followed, but were cut off by 
the inhabitants of the countries 
through which they passed, as ma¬ 
rauders, or destroyed in detail by 
Solyman. About 40 years after the 
King of France and Emperour of 
Germany, accompanied by St. Ber¬ 
nard, passed into Asia with 300,000 
frantick followers, but were over¬ 
thrown by Saladin, who, having re¬ 
taken Jerusalem, staid the flow of 
blood, proclaimed free toleration to 
the Christians in 1187; but, in 1190, 
the kings of France and England, 
and the Emperour of Germany, pro¬ 
ceeded with nearly half a million of 
men upon a new crusade. The em¬ 
perour was drowned; and though 
King Richard gained a victory over 
Saladin, he returned alone; and in 
Austria, suffered a long imprison¬ 
ment. In 1202, Baldwin set forth 
with another expedition ; but quar¬ 
relling with the Greek empire, he 
overthrew the goverment, and was 
made emperour. Afterwards John of 
Brienne set forth, in 1219, and land¬ 
ing with 100,000 men in Egypt, took 
Damietta, but lost his army by an 
inundation of the Nile. 

The last of these mad enterprize3 
was undertaken by St. Louis, King 
of France, who embarked with 200,- 
000 men, conveyed in 1800 trans¬ 
ports, under the banners of the 
cross, and landing in Egypt, was 
defeated by the Saracens, and taken 
prisoner in 1250, and, though well 
treated, and liberated in 1270, he 
embarked again, and landing at 
Tunis, he and most of his army 
perished by disease. It has been 






MODERN HISTORY, &c. 


220 

estimated that these religious wars 
cost Christian Europe forty millions 
of lives, while they deferred the pro¬ 
gress of civilization, and conferred a 
ferocious military character on the 
people. 

In the religious battle, in Spain, 
with the Moors, Alphonsus II., about 
800, slew 70,000 Moors in one battle. 
No quarter was given by opposite 
religions 1 

At the battle of Tholosa, in Spain, 
in 1220, Mahommed A1 Nahur, the 
Moorish Emperour, was defeated, 
with the loss of 150,000 foot, and 30,- 
000 horse slain, and 50,000 prisoners, 
by Alphonsus IX.; in 1340, Alphon¬ 
sus XI. defeated them, with the 
slaughter of 200,000. Modern bat¬ 
tles, even the crowning victories of 
Napoleon, were mere skirmishes to 
these almost forgotten slaughters, 
recorded by Mariana. 

Constantinople was taken by Ma¬ 
hommed II. on May 29, 1453, and 
the Emperour Constantine Paleola- 
gus killed in the breach. There have 
since, or, in 377 years, been 24 Turk¬ 
ish emperours, reigning, on the ave¬ 
rage, 16 years. 

Athens, with 200 other Christian 
cities, was, in 1455, united to the 
Ottoman Empire by Mahomet II. 

The kingdom of Poland rose to 
distinction under the Jagellan Dy¬ 
nasty, between 1320 and 1580. Mus¬ 
covy was a distinct Sclavonick race, 
and a province of Tartary till 1500. 
Prussia was a province of Poland 
till 1600. In 1773, 1793, 1795, and 
1815, Russia, Austria, and Prussia 
confederated to seize on parts of Po¬ 
land. 

The siege of Belgrade, so often 
quoted, was undertaken in May, 
1717, under Prince Eugene. In Au¬ 
gust, the Turkish army, of 200,000, 
approached to relieve it, and a battle 
was fought, in which the Turks lost 
20,000 men, after which Belgrade 
surrendered. 

The Mogul empire w r as divided 
into districts, governed by Sovbahs, 
and these into local jurisdictions, 
governed by Nabobs. When the 
empire fell, these aimed at independ¬ 
ence, and of their conflicts the East 
India Company took advantage, and 
made nearly the whole dependant or 
tributary. 


The Bucaniers were European 
pirates, who, in the American seas, 
sought to divide with the Spaniards 
the wealth which they had plunder¬ 
ed from the native inhabitants of 
Mexico and Peru. The vast extent 
of unoccupied coast afforded secure 
places of rendezvous, and their des¬ 
perate courage- made them masters 
of those seas. The first of them, 
whose exploits are recorded, was 
Pierre Frank, a Dunkirk man, whose 
success was of short duration. The 
second w r as Bartholomew, a Portu¬ 
guese ; he was wrecked, and drown¬ 
ed. The third was Montbar, a 
Frenchman, and he was stimulated 
by detestation of the Spanish atro¬ 
cities, more than the love of plunder, 
and was, by the Spaniards, called 
the exterminator, for he never 
spared them, and never relaxed in 
his enterprizes. The next was 
L’ Olonois, who, in like manner, 
carried on an exterminating war, in 
which he attacked the Spaniards in 
their forts and towns, till he was 
killed. The last was Morgan, com¬ 
monly called Sir Henry, and he 
contrived to organize an immense 
piratical force, taking Porto-Bello. 
and marching with a land-force, and 
taking Panama, which he burnt. 
Their prize-money was so considera¬ 
ble, that desperate adventurers join¬ 
ed them from all parts of Europe, 
and they became as terrible in the 
Peruvian Seas as in the Mexican; 
but, in the beginning of the last cen¬ 
tury, the maritime powers found it 
their common interest to put them 
down, for the commerce of all coun¬ 
tries suffered by the Spaniards in 
their defence, as well as from the 
Bucaniers, who did not confine 
their attacks to Spanish vessels, 
when a rich prize offered. 

The Succession War, from 1702 to 
1713, arose out of a question whe¬ 
ther an Austrian or a French prince, 
grandson of Louis XIV., should suc¬ 
ceed to the throne of Spain. Our 
William III. organized a confederacy 
to oppose Louis, but, after obtaining 
great victories at Blenheim, &c. &c., 
the Allies withdrew one after an¬ 
other, and the French prince suc¬ 
ceeded. 

The first European settlement in 
Virginia was made in 1607; at New 




MODERN HISTORY, &c. 


York, in 1609; and, in Massachu¬ 

setts, in 1620. 

The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, or 
Breed’s Hill, took place June 17,1775. 
On October 11, 1777, Burgoyne sur¬ 
rendered, October 19, 1781, Corn¬ 
wallis surrendered. On November 
30, 1782, the independence was ac¬ 
knowledged. 

On March 4, 1789, Washington 
became president. In 1797, J. 
Adams. In 1801, T. Jefferson. In 
1809, James Madison. In 1817, 
James Monroe. In 1825, J. Q. 
Adams. In 1829, A. Jackson. 

Penn’s charter was dated March 
4, 1681; and his first colony was 
500 persons. 

The Cape of Good Hope and 


the Canary Islands were dis¬ 
covered about.1405 

Madeira was discovered in.1420 

The Cape de Yerd Islands* • - • • 1474 
The Bahamas, Hispaniola, and 

Cuba, by Columbus.**1492 

The Continent of America, by 

ditto.-*.1494 

Brazil.1500 

Ceylon.1506 

Madagascar.1507 

New Spain, and the Straits of 

Magellan .1518 

The first voyage round the 

world was completed in.1522 

Japan was discovered..1542 

California.1543 

Virginia colonized by Raleigh . 1584 

Falkland Islands.1592 

Hudson’s Bay.1610 

Louisiana .1633 

Otaheite, &c.«. 1767 


In 1804, Napoleon had assembled 
160,000 men, 10,000 horses, 17,000 
sailors, and a flotilla of 1300 vessels, 
to invade England, from Boulogne, 
Wimereux, and Ambleteuse, and the 
expedition was baffled by Admiral 
Villeneuve sailing to the West 
Indies, instead of entering the chan¬ 
nel. The English Government sub¬ 
sidized Austria and Russia, and the 
army of Boulogne conquered Austria, 
and gained the victory over both at 
Austerlitz. The coasts of Kent and 
Sussex were also lined with martello 
towers and lines of defence, and 
nearly half the population formed 
volunteer corps. The question was 
the evacuation of Malta, agreeably 
to the treaty of Amiens. 

S 2 


_221 

The Battle of Leipsic, fought in 
1813, was lost by Napoleon, owing 
to a body of 30,000 Saxon allies 
turning on the French, in the heat 
of the battle. 

The Battle of Waterloo was con¬ 
tinued till night, by the arrival of 
40,000 Prussians, under Bulow, about 
4 o’clock, and was gained by a flank 
assault of 10,000 fresh Prussian ca¬ 
valry, under Blucher on the right of 
the French army, at 8 in the even¬ 
ing. The battle was fought on the 
position of the combined army, 
which was a plain, with a valley in 
front; and their two advanced posi¬ 
tions, in the valley, were a farm¬ 
house, and enclosed yard by the 
road side, called La Haye Sainte, in 
the centre ; and a chateau, with an 
enclosed garden and orchard wall, 
called Hougomont , to the right. 
These, containing picked regiments, 
were taken by assault, with terrible 
mutual slaughter, but Hougomont 
was afterwards burnt by Congreve 
rockets. The battle then took place 
on the ascents from the valley, and 
on the plain above, till the arrival of 
Blucher’s cavalry, who, galloping 
through the valley, took La Haye 
Sainte, and placed the French on 
the heights between two fires, i 

The year 1830 was remarkable for 
three revolutions, that in France, 
July 27th, when Charles X. was ex¬ 
pelled, and a constitutional Govern¬ 
ment formed by Louis Philippe, and 
the Chamber of Deputies; that in 
Belgium, in September, by which 
the Orange Family were driven into 
Holland, and a popular government 
established; and that in Poland, in 
December, by which the Russians 
were expelled, and a popular govern- 
men formed. 

Treaties and National Conventions 
in Modem History. 


The Golden Bull . . .1356 

Treaty of Troyes . . . 1420 

Pragmatick Sanction . . 1439 

League of Cambray . . 1508 

Edict of Worms . . . 1521 

The French League . . 1576 

Peace of Munster . . . 1648 

-Breda . . . 1667 

Triple Alliance ... 1668 
Treaty of Nimeguen . . 1678 

League of Augsburg . . 1686 

Treaty of Partition . . . 1700 























ARMS, CUSTOMS, &c. 


222 


Methuen Treaty.1703 

Treaty of Utrecht.1713 

-Aix-la Chapelle.1748 

Family Compact.1761 

Peace of Paris.1763 

-Versailles.1783 

Treaty of Pilnitz.1791 

Partition of Poland • ..1795 

Peace of Leoben.1797 

Congress of Radstadt.. 

Peace of Luneville.1801 

-Amiens.1802 

-Presburg.. • • 1803 

Berlin Decree.1806 

Peace of Tilsit.1807 

Milan Decree.. 

Treaty of Bayonne.1808 

Peace of Vienna.1809 

Treaty of Paris.1814 

-Ghent.. 

Congress of Vienna.1815 

Treaty of Paris.1817 

-Akerman.1826 

-London.1829 


ARMS, CUSTOMS, &c. 

The Greek Phalanx consisted of 
8000 men in a square battalion, with 
shields joined, and spears crossing 
each other. 

Ancient soldiers were trained to 
fight with either hand. 

A Roman Legion consisted of 6000 
rnen, divided into 10 cohorts, and 
every cohort into 6 centuries, with a 
vexilum, or standard, guarded by 10 
men. 

The Macedonian Phalanx was 16 
deep, with shields joined. 

Among the early Romans, com¬ 
manders of armies were called Impe- 
ratores, but when Caesar became Em- 
perour, the commanders were call¬ 
ed Dukes, or Lieutenants of Pro¬ 
vinces. 

In a Roman Army, the first line 
were Hastati , or young men; the 
second Principes , or middle aged; 
the third Triarii , or veterans. The 
light troops, for skirmishing, were 
called Velites. The latter had bows 
and slings, and seven javelins. The 
former, a two-edged sword, buckler, 
and helmet. 

Attached to every Roman legion 
was an ala of 300 horse in 10 turmae. 
The commander of the legion was a 
perfectus; of the cohorts, a tribune; 


and of the centuries, a centurian. 
The standard was a silver eagle, on 
the top of a spear. 

The Greeks and Romans had no 
standing armies in time of peace. In 
war, every citizen was a soldier. 

The Romans had no titles. Scipio 
and Caesar were simply so called. 
Titles began in the Court of Constan¬ 
tine. The Emperour of Germany first 
took the title of Majesty. Kings, till 
the 15th and 16th century were called 
Highness. 

The Eagle was the Imperial Sym¬ 
bol in Persia, Rome, and of Napoleon. 
It is now adopted by Austria, Prussia, 
and Russia. 

The Romans deified their empe- 
rours, &c., by a solemn publick cere¬ 
mony, called an Apotheosis, in which 
the priests and heads of the state as¬ 
sisted in great pomp. 

The Romans counted by cycles of 
9 days, the Greeks by 10, the Asia- 
ticks by 7, and hence our weeks. 

Roman names were Praenomens, 
Nomens, and Cognomens, as Caius 
Julius Caesar, or Publius Cornelius 
Scipio. 

The head of the Memnon, from 
Thebes, is in one entire block, mea¬ 
suring 10 feet from the breast to the 
top of the head, and weighs 12 tons. 

Baiae was the pleasure town of 
Rome, Daphne of Antioch, and Cano¬ 
pus of Alexandria, just like Brighton 
and Cheltenham to London, or Ver¬ 
sailles to Paris. 

The candidates for the athletick 
games, in Greece, used to be dieted 
on new cheese, dried figs, and boiled 
grain with warm water, and no meat. 
The games were leaping, foot races, 
darting, quoits, wrestling, and boxing. 

The Romans had 327 publick grana¬ 
ries, from which they distributed corn 
to the poor, at the cost of the publick 
treasury; and they had no alms¬ 
houses, or poor-rates. The Greeks 
had various charitable institutions. 

The Romans lay on couches at 
their dining tables, on their left arms, 
eating with their right. 

In Greece it was the custom, at 
meals, for the two sexes always to 
eat separately. 

The early Romans ate boiled grain; 


































ARMS, CUSTOMS, &c. 


they had not the art of bread-making, 

ana had no mills. 

All ages have produced heroick wo¬ 
men, but none a nation of Amazons. 

The largest battering rams of the 
ancients were equal in force to a 36 
lb. shot from a cannon. 

Silver was first coined by Phidon, 
king of Argos, about 860, the epoch 
of the building of Carthage, and 
about 140 years after the building of 
Solomon’s temple. 

Among discoveries of ancient coins, 
60,000 Roman ones were once found 
at Modena. 40,000 gold Greek coins 
were found in a river in Transylva¬ 
nia. 30,000 Roman coins were found 
near Brest; and 600 lbs. of silver 
coins were found in Sicily. Pots 
full are often found in Britain. 

The most ancient known coins are 
of the fifth century B. C. and are Ma¬ 
cedonian ; but others are believed to 
be more ancient. After that date 
they illustrate history, but not earlier. 
They are of gold, silver, copper, or 
brass. Few give dates, and, there¬ 
fore, they are more curious as relicks 
than useful as records. 

The most perfect chronology is 
Antini’s L’Art de verifier les Dates. 
The next is Blair’s, a Scottish work; 
and Aspin’s is a very careful com¬ 
pilation. 

The Jews had no chronology. The 
Chinese invented their Sexagenary 
Cycle, in 2539 B. C., and, till then, 
their history was necessarily con¬ 
fused. The Hindoos adopted it. Till 
epochs were fixed, and cycles invent¬ 
ed, there was no certain record of 
time; and hence the confusion of 
early history. 

Anthropophagi, or feeders on hu¬ 
man flesh, have existed in all ages, 
and still exist in Africa, and the South 
Sea Islands. Diogenes asserted, that 
we might as well eat the flesh of men 
as the flesh of other animals. The 
Greeks inform us it was a primitive 
and universal custom. Some of their 
gods lived on human flesh, and the 
Cyclops did the same. Aristotle and 
Herodotus name various nations 
who preferred human flesh to that of 
animals. The Giagas, and several 
African nations, have the same pre¬ 
ference ; and we all remember the 
practices at Owyhee, New Zealand, 
&c. &c. Human flesh has the fla¬ 


m 

vour of hog’s-flesh, and the tender¬ 
ness of the flesh of calves. 

The horrible punishment of cruci¬ 
fixion is still practised in some Ma- 
homedan countries. The unfortunate 
victims often live in torture for many 
days. All the characters of antiquity, 
who are lauded in history, indulged 
in this superlatively barbarous prac¬ 
tice. Alexander, Caesar, Augustus, 
Titus, all the Roman Emperours, and 
the Mahomedan conquerors often 
crucified their hundreds, and even 
thousands at a time, and women were 
not exempt from this fate. 

The wearing of rings is very an¬ 
cient. It was prohibiteain Rome to all 
mechanicks, and men of mean con¬ 
ditio^ to wear rings of gold, so that 
granting a license for any person to 
wear a ring, was as much as to make 
him a gentleman. The usage of 
sealing with rings is also of great 
antiquity. 

The adoration, claimed by ancient 
kings, was that of kneeling and pros¬ 
trating, as practised in many courts 
to this day. Alexander merely claim¬ 
ed this nomage after the eastern 
fashion ; and hence the railing of tho 
Greeks. 

Amphitheatres were vast erections 
in the Roman empire to amuse, or 
rather brutalize, the people, and qua¬ 
lify them for military life by the ex¬ 
hibition of murderous contests be¬ 
tween gladiators and wild beasts. 
They were of an elliptical form, and 
adapted for thousands of spectators, 
to whom carnage was made a pas¬ 
time. They were invented by Julius 
Caesar and Curio. Augustus caused 
them to be erected every where. In 
the reign of Tiberius one fell at Fi- 
denae, by which 50,000 persons were 
killed or wounded. Vespasian built 
the first of stone, the vast Coloseum 
for 100,000 spectators. Its longest 
diameter is 615.5 feet, and the other 
510, covering acres, and being 120 
feet high. It was imitated at Capua, 
Verona, Nismes, Autun, and Pola; 
while at Italica, Alba, Otriculi, Puz- 
zuoli, Poestum, Syracuse, Corinth, 
Arles, Caerleon, and other places, 
smaller ones were constructed. 

On the triumph of Trajan over the 
Dacians, 11,000 animals were killed 
in those at Rome; and 1000 gladia¬ 
tors fought during 123 days. The 





ARMS, CUSTOMS, &c. 


<24_ 

gladiators at first were malefactors, 
who fought for victory and life; or 
captives and slaves, who were made 
to fight for freedom ; but soon many 
lived by it as a profession, and even 
ladies became gladiators. They con¬ 
tinued with modifications for above 
500 years. Tilts and tournaments, 
with duelling, were the last remains 
of them. 

The Babylonians worshipped fire, 
as the emblem of the sun. They 
were acquainted with geometry and 
mechanicks, and were perfect manu¬ 
facturers, their products selling at 
vast prices in all countries. They 
professed to derive their knowledge 
from Oannes, who sprung from the 
first egg, appeared in the Red Sea, 
and taught letters and the sciences. 
Their astronomy was accurate, but 
subservient to astrology. They lived 
like the Hindoos, chiefly on vegeta¬ 
bles, in which the country, owing to 
inundations, was wonderfully pro¬ 
ductive. 

The oriental philosophers taught a 
trinity, in Orimanes , God; Methra, 
the Spirit; and Arimanes, the Devil. 

The Ancient of the Mountain was 
a title assumed by the chief of a Sy¬ 
rian corps of assassins, in the 13th 
century. 

The shield, the breast-plate or gor¬ 
get, was extended to the body and 
limbs as armour, and the helmet pro¬ 
tected the head. The most savage 
tribes use shields, and often helmets. 
Shields were usually made of leather, 
but often of wood or metal. The 
Grecian was round, the Roman 
square. The helmet was provided 
with a vizor, to raise above the eyes; 
and a beaver, to lower for eating. 
The vizor, with grated bars, is used 
in the arms of nobility; the elevation, 
without bars, a knight; and the vizor 
closed, an esquire. The armour, for 
the arms and shoulders, was called 
the vambrace and pouldron ; for the 
thighs and legs, cuises and greaves; 
ana, for the hands, gauntlets .— 
Knights wore golden spurs; squires 
silver ones. The armour, or mail, 
was called chain , if made of scales 
or net-work ; or plate , if in small me¬ 
tal pieces. The Saxons and Nor¬ 
mans used long spears. The Greeks 
threw theirs. Spears were 6 yards 
long, and pikes 14 or 15 feet. Maces 
were originally clubs, used by caval¬ 


ry, and fixed in their saddles. The 

Roman swords were from 20 to 30 
inches. The broad sword and cime- 
ter has lately been adopted. 

Taliesin says the Gwyddyl, (Celts 
or Gauls) Brython , and Romani had 
taken possession of different parts 
of these islands before his time. 

“ Gwyddl, a Brython, a Romani. 

“ A wana hon dyhedd, a dyfysei; 
“Ac am derfyn Prydein, cain ei 
threfi.” 

Irish little resemble Welsh. The 
first Celts were progeny of the 
Titans, and their princes and nobles 
were Curetes and Corybantes, or 
Cowri, and Cowri-bann, meaning 
nobles; and their name Gwyddyl, 
is from Gwydd-trees or shrubs, or 
inhabitants of forests. 

Aaron Raschid, in 802, sent from 
Bagdat, among other presents, to 
Charlemagne, a clock of curious 
workmanship. 

The lands being taken by con¬ 
querors from proprietors, and given 
to partizans, the new occupants 
would have been burnt in their 
dwellings by the indignant people 
if they had been accessible. A fort, 
for the same reason, is the first 
erection of intruders in every 
new colony. The ancient Castle 
generally enclosed from 5 to 10 acres 
of land: and had a river or ditch, 
commonly filled with water. On its 
verge was a wall, then another wall, 
a space between them being called 
the ballium. Within the second wall 
were apartments and storehouses for 
the garrison, and a citadel, or keep, 
placed on a high mound for further 
security; and there often were sub¬ 
terranean secret ways. Beyond the 
moat was the barbican, or watch- 
tower, and from it, across the moat, 
was a drawbridge raised inwardly. 
The entrance through the ballium 
was secured by gates, with a pon¬ 
derous grating, or portcullis, wnich 
was raised or let down by iron 
chains running over pulleys. The 
walls were further protected by bat¬ 
tlements and towers, and by loop¬ 
holes, to fire arrows through. All 
the walls were 8 or 10 feet thick, but 
those of the keep were 15 or 20; and, 
without artillery, they seemed un¬ 
approachable, and likely to surrender 
only from want of provisions. In 





ARMS, CUSTOMS, &c. 


225 


some secure part, there were vaults 
for the security of prisoners. Pro¬ 
bably some of them were first con¬ 
structed by the Romans, and others 
in the time of Alfred ; but the sys¬ 
tem in England was carried to per¬ 
fection by the Normans. 

Archers were a formidable part of 
all ancient armies, and the use of 
the bow seems to have been known 
to all nations, when first discovered. 
The Scythians were the best ancient 
archers, and the English among the 
moderns. The victories of Cressy, 
Poictiers, and Agincourt were chiefly 
gained by the English archers. Ro¬ 
bin Hood shot a full mile ; and, ac¬ 
cording to his bard, a north-country 
mile was equal to two statute ones. 
The Scythian bow was of horn. 
The English long-bow was 5 feet 6, 
and they were made of steel and 
brass. Arrows were from 3 to 5 feet. 
Ash was used by the English, and 
goose feathered, two of the fledges 
white and one black. The heads 
were iron or brass, with light steel 
points, and small barbs. The strings 
v/ere of gut, or hide, or hemp. A 
sheaf of arrows was 24; and the 
archer was armed with a maul and 
a dagger. The English archers drew 
to the ear steadily. A furlong was 
the distance of the butt, in shooting 
at marks. The Parthians, and other 
nations, had horse archers. 

The usual range of the long-bow 
was from 3000 to 4000 yards. Robin 
Hood and Little John shot twice 
that distance. They could shoot six 
arrows in two minutes. The length 
of the bow was six feet, of the arrow 
two or three. They were of yew or 
ash. Cross-bows-were fixed to a 
stock of iron or wood. It was bent 
by a lever, and its two strings were 
discharged by a trigger. It threw 
bullets and stones, as well as arrows. 
Its range was 150 yards. 

Among the ancients the balista 
discharged stones, and the catapulta 
arrows. They were equivalent to 
artillery. The catapulta threw ar¬ 
rows half a mile, and the balista, 
stones of 200 or 300 weight. 

The mark used by archers, in trials 
of skill, was called a popinjay, be¬ 
cause like a parrot. Archers used 
long bows, of yew or steel; others 
were cross-bow-men, who fired quar¬ 


rels, or darts and stones. Bowyers 
made bows, and fletchers arrows 
and darts. 

The composition of gunpowder is 
said to be concealed in the works of 
Roger Bacon; and he had correct 
notions of the radiation of light, if 
he did not invent spectacles. His rea¬ 
soning powers did not, however, en¬ 
able him to discard the elixir vitae, the 
philosopher’s stone, and astrology. 

Robins says, that no field-piece 
should be loaded with more powder 
than a fifth or sixth weight of its 
ball; nor any battering-piece with 
more than a third. 

The velocity of the explosion of 
gunpowder, fired alone from a can¬ 
non, is 7000 feet per second ; and, at 
the moment of explosion, four times 
greater. Cannon-balls go farthest 
at an elevation of 30°, and less as 
the ball is less. 

Cannon were used at Qnesnoy, or 
Cressy, perhaps before, and called 
bumbards. 

The largest known piece of ordi¬ 
nance is of brass, cast in 1685, at 
Beijapour, by Aulem Geer. It is 14 
feet 1 inch long, and 28 inches bore, 
and equal to a ball of 2G00 lbs. 

13-inch mortars range 2£ miles, 
and weigh 82 cwt., are 5 feet 3 inches 
long, and take a charge of from 20 
to 30 lbs. of powder; 10 inch range 
2 miles; and 8- inch, 1 mile, 2 feet 1 
inch long, with 2 lb. 2 oz. of powder; 
13-inch, in the land-service, are 3 feet 
8 inches long, with 9 lb. 1 oz. of 
powder; 68 lb. shot are 8 inches in 
diameter, with 9 lb. of powder, and 
bore 4 inches ; a 13-inch shell weighs 
198 lbs., and is charged with 6f lbs., 
of powder. 

The Shrapnel shell is a bomb filled 
with balls, and a lighted fuse to 
make it explode before it reaches 
the enemy, when the bullets sepa¬ 
rate, and proceed as before. 

The range of carcasses is about two 
miles, and those of 13-inch diameter 
require about 30 lbs. of powder. 

The famous floating batteries with 
which Gibraltar was attacked in 
1782 were the scheme of D’Arcon, a 
French engineer. There were 10 of 
them, and they resisted the heaviest 
shells and 22-pound shot, but ulti¬ 
mately yielded to red-hot shot. 







BUILDING, &c. 


226 

Rifle barrels make the ball pass 
through a screw, formed in the length 
of the barrel, by which the velocity, 
at exit, is increased, and the aim is 
more true. 

Muskets have, till lately, borne 
the ancient names of hand-guns, 
alivers, hackbuts, harquebusses, 
match-locks, and fire-locks. Within 
120 years they were discharged with 
a match. 

Perkins’s steam-artillery is to 
throw 60 balls, of 4 lbs., per minute; 
and from 100 to 1000 musket balls 
per minute. 

In modern tacticks, the hollow 
square is preferred to the solid 
squares of the ancients, when infan¬ 
try are attacked by cavalry. 

We cannot wonder that kings so 
readily cause men to be killed, when 
it appears, on authority, that Charles 
the Tenth, in a single year gratified 
his royal taste by 89 stag-hunts, and 
by shooting 3525 pheasants, 1375 

artridges, 555 hares, and 1532 rab- 

its. In all, this royal exemplar de¬ 
stroyed, in one year, 7404 animals, 
most of them more worthy to live 
than himself; while his precious son, 
the Dauphin, claimed nis 7025, in¬ 
cluding more pheasants and hares 
than his father. In one year, 1828-9, 
there were killed, in France, 834 
wolves and cubs. 

The European nations have had in 
service the following armies :=Rus- 
sia and Austria, 500,000 each ; Prus¬ 
sia, 350,000; Great Britain, 300,000; 
France, 650,000; Spain, 150,000; 
Holland, 50,000; Bavaria, 50,000; 
Turkey, 450,000; Sweden and Na¬ 
ples, 40,000; Denmark, Portugal, &c. 
25,000. each. 

It is estimated that, in the last 
4000 years, the following number of 
the human race have perished by 
violent deaths in the field of battle, 
or have been slaughtered in the sack¬ 
ing of cities: During the time of 

Bacchus, &c. . . . Millions 15 

Sesostris .... 15 

Semiramis .... 10 

Cyrus.10 

Cambyses, &c. ... 25 

Alexander . . . . 10 

His Successors ... 20 

Jewish Wars . . . 25 

Romans before Caesar . . 60 


Grecian Wars . . . 15 

Other Ancients ... 25 

Twelve Caesars ... 30 

Roman Empire ... 60 

Northern Nations ... 50 

Middle Ages .... 40 

Crusades .... 40 

Saracens .... 60 

Reformation .... 30 

Tartars.80 

Turks.60 

Chinese.100 

French Revolution . . 60 

American Wars ... 40 

African Wars . . . .100 

Killed in Battle, &c. . . 980 

Severely Wounded . . 2940 

Famine and Suffering . . 2940 

Millions . . . 6860 


At the rate, in 4000 years, of 1,715, 
000 per annum; or seven times the 
present number of the species. 

*** For other facts in history , and 
for numerous dates in relation to all 
kinds of events , please to consult the 
articles Biography and Chronology. 


BUILDING AND ARCHITEC¬ 
TURE. 

The Cyclopean Style , from its ex¬ 
traordinary magnitude, is ascribed 
to the early Cyclops, men, who, 
from their power, prowess, and 
mighty works, are believed to have 
been the Giants and Titans of the 
Septuagint version of Isaiah; and 
whose deceased monarchs became 
afterwards the- sovereign Gods of 
Greece and Rome. The general cha¬ 
racter of the Cyclopean style was 
immense blocks* without cement, 
though the walls are now irregular, 
from smaller stones, which filled up 
the interstices, having disappeared. 
Hamilton divides the style into four 
eras:—The first, or oldest, is that 
used at Tiryns and Mycenae, consist¬ 
ing of blocks of various sizes, of 
which the interstices are or were 
filled up with small stones. The 
second era as at Iulis and Delphi, is 
marked by polygonal stones, which 
nevertheless fit into each other with 
great nicety. In this style there are 
no courses. The third style, as in 
the Phocian cities, and in some of 
Bceotia and Argolis, was distin¬ 
guished by the work being made in 













* 


BUILDING, &c. 


courses, and the stones, though of 

unequal size, being of the same 
height. The fourth and youngest 
style, presents horizontal courses of 
masonry, not always of the same 
height, but formed of stones, which 
were all rectangular. This style 
was chiefly confined to Attica. Pliny 
says, that the Cyclops were the in¬ 
ventors of the fortifications of towns, 
and also of towers. Sir William 
Gell adds, that Tiryns is the best 
specimen of the military architecture 
of the heroick ages. Homer calls it 
the well-walled Tirynthus, so that 
there cannot be a doubt but that the 
present ruins are those of the citadel, 
which existed in the time of the poet, 
and was built about 1379 before 
Christ, by Praetus.— Fosbrooke. 

The Gate of the Lions, at Mycenae, 
is Cyclopean. Euripides calls My¬ 
cenae a Cyclopean city; and Ho¬ 
mer mentions it among those which 
were fortified before the Trojan war. 
Apollodorus says, that Perseus forti¬ 
fied Tiryns and Mycenae. The Gate 
of the Lions, says Pausanias, is said 
to be the work of the Cyclops, who 
built the walls of Tiryns for Praetus. 
And the lions are the only existing 
specimen of the sculpture of the he¬ 
roick ages. They have not the tails 
of lions, a circumstance observable 
also in the sculptures of Persepolis, 
where animals very like those of My¬ 
cenae are represented, as well as lions, 
who have the tail natural to their 
species. The Cyclops were wor¬ 
shippers of fire, Vulcan, and the Sun; 
and the lion may have been the na¬ 
tional symbol. 

The Cyclopean gate of Mycenae 
affords a perfect commentary upon 
passages of scripture. The markets 
were held in these places : “ And 
here,” says Dr. Clarke, “ we see the 
origin of the vicinity between the 
forum, senate-house, and basilica.” 
“ Either the Britons,” says Dr. Fos- 
brook, “invented modes of fortifica¬ 
tion for themselves, or copied from 
others.” That the Cyclops were 
Celts is certain ; and it appears that 
the postern gate of Mycenae is in the 
form of one of the Trilithons of Stone¬ 
henge ; and that the Cyclops wor¬ 
shipped the Sun, whose temple in 
Britain, mentioned by Diodorus, is 
that celebrated remain. The Acro¬ 
polis of Mycenae is marked by ter- 


__ 227 

races, which wind up a hill, and were 
defended by walls, square towers be¬ 
ing placed at the angles, and at the 
distance of about every 50 feet in the 
straight walls. Trer Caeri, the most 
perfect of the British fortresses, is in 
like manner a hill terraced and hoop¬ 
ed with walls; and the Little Do- 
ward, near Monmouth, has the wind¬ 
ing ascent, and earthworks of founda¬ 
tions at top, similar to Mycenae. The 
ancient Irish fort, called Horsleap, is 
also a succession of terraces. The 
Cyclopean masonry was not, how¬ 
ever, limited to Greece. Two fine 
specimens occur in Italy, at Ansido- 
nia and Saturnia, towns anteriour to 
Rome, and at the Old Lycosures In 
Arcadia, whence issued all the colo¬ 
nies of Italy. We may see the reli¬ 
gious style of architecture, belonging 
to the Cyclopean age, in the fine re¬ 
mains at Salset, Elephanta, Canora, 
and Uloura. They are caverns cut 
out in the body of a rocky hill, and 
shaped into courts, supported by 
parts of the rock, formed into co¬ 
lumns at Elephanta, with cushion- 
like capitals. The sides are filled 
with bas-reliefs, so prominent that 
they are joined to the rock only by 
the back. Many of the figures are 
colossal. 

Egyptian architecture astonishes 
by massy grandeur. It simply con¬ 
sists of enormous blocks, thick co¬ 
lumns, walls narrowing upwards, 
with immense impending cornices, 
but no pediments, because, as it never 
rains in Egypt, there was no neces¬ 
sity for these, or roofs. It improved 
the Cyclopean. 

The earliest Egyptian column was 
simply a stalk of the lotus, topped by 
its calix. The lotus is the ornament 
which reigned every where; and it 
is interlaced with infinite grace in the 
volutes of the lonick and Composite 
capitals. In short, the calix of a 
flower above a bundle of its stalks 
suggested the form of the column, 
base, and capital. All the ornaments 
are heavy in the execution, and pffer 
no repose to the eye. The Egyptians 
worshipped every divinity but the 
graces; every thing was upon a grand 
scale, suited only to gods and kings. 
Therefore, their buildings are espe¬ 
cially characterized by forests of co¬ 
lumns, avenues of sphinxes, lions, or 
rams, all colossal; large moles, with 





BUILDING, &c. 


228 

immense colossal statues in front of 
them, obelisks, gate-ways, preceded 
by avenues, and detached from the 
moles which flanked them. 

Strabo thus describes an Egyptian 
temple: At the first entrance is a 
court or avenue paved with stones 
about 100 feet wide, and 3 or 400 feet 
long, sometimes more. This is call¬ 
ed the Dromos. On each side are 
sphinxes in two rows, about 30 feet 
asunder. After this, is one or more 
vestibules. Next is the temple, which 
consists of a large court or anti-tem¬ 
ple, and an innermost temple. The 
latter is not very large, and there is 
no sculpture in it; or, at least, if 
there is, it is of some beast, but never 
of the human figure. At the further 
end of the anti-temple, ars a sort of 
wings of the height of the temple, 
and the walls as far distant from each 
other as are the breadths of the 
foundations of the walls of the tem¬ 
ple, and they are so built as to incline 
towards each other. On these walls 
are cut very large figures, much like 
the Etruscan and Grecian works. 
Strabo joins with Herodotus in say¬ 
ing, that the Egyptians and Phoeni¬ 
cians were the first nations who 
erected temples, but the Indian ca¬ 
verns are justly presumed to be more 
ancient. 

Denon gives the general plan of 
the great temples : 1. An avenue of 
sphinxes. 2. Two colossal figures 
on each side of a gateway, formed by 
immense towers of truncated pyra¬ 
mids, with overhanging cornices. 3. 
This gateway led into a court full of 
columns, and chambers round the 
walls. 4. Passing across this, the 
visiter Comes to other courts, likewise 
full of columns, through gateways, 
ornamented with colossal figures and 
obelisks. 5. In the centre was the 
sanctuary, without light, consisting 
of a single excavated block. One of 
them, at the temple of Latona, was 
71 feet broad in front, carved out of 
one entire stone, and roofed by an¬ 
other. Semiramis is said to have 
brought from the mountains of Ara¬ 
bia a rock 20 cubits broad, and 150 
long. Herodotus mentions one more 
than 20 cubits broad and 15 long, 
conveyed from Elephanta by a jour¬ 
ney of 20 days. The general rule for 
determining the age of Egyptian 


temples is their size. The smaller 
they are, the more ancient. 

The ancient Egyptians believed 
that their souls, after many thousand 
years, would come to re-inhabit their 
bodies, in case these latter were pre¬ 
served entire. Hence arose the em¬ 
balming and the situation of the se¬ 
pulchres, in places not subject to the 
inundation of the river. These tombs 
at Thebes consist of sepulchral grot¬ 
toes, made in the side of a hill, from 
its base to within three quarters of 
its summit. The lowest are the best 
executed, and the most spacious. A 
door open to the east leads to a gal¬ 
lery supported by columns or pilas¬ 
ters. At the end of the gallery is a 
well, which leads to the catacombs, 
where the mummies were deposited. 
These walls, from 40 to 60 feet deep, 
abut upon long subterranean alleys, 
terminating in a square room, sup¬ 
ported by pillars. In the upper gal¬ 
lery are bas-reliefs, or paintings on 
subjects relating to the funeral cere¬ 
monies ; and every grotto had a ceil¬ 
ing painted in a fanciful manner. 
Every grotto communicated with the 
valley by a large door. This leads 
into a succession of galleries, with 
chambers on both sides. One of 
these contains the actual sarcopha¬ 
gus, in which was placed the mummy 
of a king. It retains its cover, upon 
which is the royal effigy. The grand 
point of notice, however, in these 
souterrains, is the fresco paintings. 
They exhibit all the arts of civiliza¬ 
tion which then existed in Egypt, 
such as relate to manufacture and 
agriculture, saddlery, carriages, pot¬ 
tery, counters for trade, rural employ¬ 
ment, hunting, fishing, marches of 
troops, punishments in use, musical 
instruments, habits and furniture. 

Sesostris placed in the temple of 
Vulcan, at Memphis, colossal figures 
of himself and his wife, 30 cubits 
high, and of his children 20. 

How the Egyptians and Cyclo- 
peans moved and formed such stu¬ 
pendous masses has been often a 
subject of doubt and admiration, but 
the principles of mechanicks are few 
and simple. Plumb-lines, and wheels 
and axles, and levers are mentioned 
in all contemporary writings. 

The Pyramids of Egypt have been 
opened within these few years, but 




229 


BUILDING, &c. 


wi thout any particular discovery, be¬ 

sides some* passages, and an empty 
chamber in the great Pyramid, 66 
feet by 27. In an upper chamber, 36 
feet by 18 and 19 high, there was 
found a sarcophagus. Similar cham¬ 
bers were found in smaller pyramids 
empty, but sometimes containing 
images and rude sculptures. Belzoni 
penetrated the second pyramid of 
Chesroes, and found a chamber, 46 
feet by 16 and 24 high, with a sar¬ 
cophagus, and an inscription certify¬ 
ing that it had been opened by Ma¬ 
homet I. The great pyramid is 543 
feet high, and the second, 452 feet. 

The Temple of Ypsambul, in Nu¬ 
bia, is cut out of the solid rock, and 
of vast dimensions. Belzoni found 
in it 4 colossal figures 65 feet high, 
25 feet across the shoulders, the face 
7 feet and the ear above a yard. 

The same English and Italian ex¬ 
cavators also dug out the great 
Sphinx, and found that it was sculp¬ 
tured from the solid rock, the paws 
being put on by masonry. Since 
that time, Egypt has been visited by 
many zealous antiquarian travellers, 
particularly by M. Calliaud, and last¬ 
ly by M. Champoillon, a gentleman 
who has analyzed the principles of 
the hieroglyphick character, so as to 
be able to translate them with little 
difficulty; and it appears, that, in¬ 
stead of veiling great mysteries, their 
contents are little more important 
than the tomb-stones in a country 
church-yard, generally certifying no¬ 
thing more than the name of the 
constructor, and the local and tem¬ 
porary object for which it was set up, 
mixed with some trifling mythologi¬ 
cal reference. 

There are 5 Grecian orders of 
Architecture, the Tuscan, Dorick, 
lonick, Corinthian, and Composite; 
to which is now added, the Gothick, 
Oriental, Egyptian, and Chinese 
styles. 

In the Tuscan order, the shaft is 
six times the diameter, and the base 
and capital, each, half a diameter; 
the whole seven diameters, and the 
pedestal is a fourth more, and the 
entablature a fifth. 

The Corinthian column is 20 mo¬ 
dules high, the entablature 5, the 
base 1; the capital 70 minutes. 

In the Composite order, the height 
T 


is 20 modules, the entablature 5, the 

capital 70 minutes, the base 30 min¬ 
utes. 

In the Dorick order, the base is 32 
minutes, the pedestal 1 diameter 36 
minutes, the cornice 16 minutes, the 
base 3 minutes, the shafts 7 diame¬ 
ters, the capital 30 minutes, the 
architrave 30, the frieze 45, and the 
cornice 45. 

In a Dorick column, the height o i 
the base, shaft, and capital, is 16 mo¬ 
dules ; the entablature over the capi¬ 
tal is 4 modules, 1 for the architrave, 
1£ for the frieze, and 1£ for the cor¬ 
nice. The base is one module, and 
the capital 32 minutes. 

The spiral ornaments, like ram’s 
horns, in the lonick, Corinthian, and 
Composite, are called Volutes. Ca- 
ryatydes, to support entablatures, 
were figures of Carian women, taken 
prisoners in the city of Caria, by the 
Athenians. Men are called Atlan- 
tides. 

Ascending, the parts of a column 
are the plinth, the torus, the bead, 
the cincture, the shaft, the astragal, 
the colorind, the annulets, the avolo, 
the abacus, the fillet, the architrave, 
the frieze, the cornice, the listel, or 
uppermost projection. 

Columns consist of pedestal, shaft, 
and capital, in the Dorick, lonick, 
Corinthian, Tuscan, or Composite 
orders. A pillar is a detached col¬ 
umn. A pilaster is a support in a 
wall, square, but in the proportion 
of the columns. 

A minute, in architecture, is the 
60th of the greatest diameter or mo¬ 
dule. 

Columns, in ascending, are dimi¬ 
nished one-sixth or 2-13ths in diame¬ 
ter, commencing about one-third of 
the height. 

Egyptian modules are the height 
of tne lonick column, and 4£ is the 
entablature. The capital is 21 min¬ 
utes, and the base 30 minutes. In 
the entablature, the architrave is 3, 
the frieze 3, the comice 4. 

The Saxon style is known by the 
circular arch, and the Gothick by 
the pointed arch, either single or 
florid. 

A well-proportioned room is a 
breadth and a half. 




230 


BUILDING, &c. 


Babel, or Baalbel, was a lofty 
temple built at Babylon, by Belus, 
both as an observatory, and a tem¬ 
ple of the Sun. It remains still in 
existence, under the name of Birs 
Nimrod, and has been amply de¬ 
scribed by Rich and Porter. It was 
formed of 8 square towers, one on 
the other, 660 feet high, and the 
same at each side of its base. Late¬ 
ly its height was 160 feet, and the 
reeds, between every 3 or 4 layers of 
brick, were perfectly fresh, while the 
brick seems to be calcined by fire. 
Babylon continued, for 2000 years 
after, to be the most splendid city in 
the world, and so Alexander found it 
as late as 325 B. C. It decayed on 
the building of Bagdat by the Ca¬ 
liphs, as better situated for inter¬ 
course, in 760 A. D. According to 
the Jewish annals, it was built 2234 
B. C., beautified and enlarged in 2150, 
by Semiramis, who led from it her 
armies of all nations. The Euphra¬ 
tes passed through it. It was a 
square, 15 miles on each side, with 
100 brass gates. It was composed 
of 25 streets each way, 15 miles long, 
and 150 feet broad, crossing each 
other at right angles, besides 4 half¬ 
streets, 200 feet wide, facing the 
walls, in detached houses, with gar¬ 
dens and pleasure-grounds. The 
walls were 87 feet thick, and 370 
high. So says Herodotus and 
other ancients, but the whole must 
be exaggerated, for, 15 miles each 
way, would be 225 square miles; 
and London, vast as it is, does not 
cover above 32. It must have been 
equal to Middlesex, and its walls as 
high as St. Paul’s. 

The palace, the hunting gardens, 
the artificial lake 40 miles square and 
6 fathoms deep, as well as the temple 
of Belus, or Baal, with a golden im¬ 
age, 40 feet high, valued at 3£ mil¬ 
lions sterling, all savour of eastern 
exaggeration. In 540 B. C., it was 
besieged by Cyrus, but being pro¬ 
visioned for 20 years, he blockaded 
it for 2 years, and then took it by 
fording the river during a festival of 
the Babylonians. In 518, under Da¬ 
rius, it revolted, and being retaken, 
its 100 gates and walls were destroy¬ 
ed. In 478, Xerxes, after his defeat 
in Greece, passed through Babylon, 
and, to recruit his treasures, plun¬ 
dered the temple of Belus, and de¬ 


molished its lofty tower. In 324, 
Alexander began to re-build it, and 
employed 10,000 men for 2 months, 
but his death arrested their progress. 
30 years after, Seleucus built Seleu- 
cia near it, and drew off its inhabit¬ 
ants, so that in 650 years after, Je¬ 
rome describes it as deserted. 

The palace of the kings of Baby¬ 
lon is still so called by the natives, 
under the name of the Kasr. It is a 
vast mass, 700 yards each way. The 
walls are 8 feet thick, one within 
another, and strengthened with but¬ 
tresses. There is also another ex¬ 
tensive ruin, called Amram, three 
quarters of a mile long, and half a 
mile broad, which rises 50 or 60 feet 
above the level of the plain. A third 
mass is called the Muljelibe, which 
is considered to be the remains of 
the tower of Belus; the sides are 
from 200 to 150 yards, and the present 
elevation is 141 feet. The ruins are 
immense, consisting of pottery, vit¬ 
rified brick, bitumen, &c. Another 
vast ruin or tower, six miles south¬ 
west of Hellah, is called the Birs 
Nimrod, and consists of a mound, 
762 yards round, rising in a conical 
form, 198 feet, and on its top has a 
solid cone of brick-work, 37 feet 
high. Whether this or the former is 
the temple of Belus, seems uncer¬ 
tain ; near it is another mound, with 
traces of ruins of vast magnitude. 
The three former buildings are on 
the eastern bank, and the Birs 
Nimrod on the western side of the 
Euphrates. 

These vast remains lie on the bank 
of the Euphrates, north of the vil¬ 
lage of Hellah, 9 miles from Mo- 
hawil, and 48 from Bagdat; and, for 
their age, are wonderfully preserved. 

The walls of Babylon were 46 
miles round, which, when the city 
decayed, served as a park for hunting 
to the kings of Persia. The era of 
Nabonasser, one of the kings, was 
the 8th Olympiad, 6th of Rome, or 
748 B. C. ... 

Noah’s Ark, taking the cubit at 22 
inches, was 547 English feet long, 91 
broad, and 54 high, measuring, ac¬ 
cording to Bishop Wilkins, 72,625 
tons, or 20 times as much as the 
Hibernia. 

The wall which separates China 
from Tartary, has been built full two 




BUILDING, &c. 


thousand years, and is supposed to 

be upwards of 1200 miles in length : 
its height varies according to the 
circumstances of the surface. Where 
one of us contrived to get to the top 
it was upwards of 30 feet high, and 
about 24 broad. The foundation is 
laid upon large square stones; the 
superstructure is brick; the centre is 
a kind of mortar, covered with flag¬ 
stones. A parapet of no ordinary 
strength runs on each side of an em¬ 
battled wall. If we consider that 
this immense fabrick covers the 
widest rivers, on arches of propor¬ 
tionate size, or, in the same form, 
connects mountains together, occa¬ 
sionally ascending the highest hills, 
or descending into the deepest vales, 
the most active powers of imagina¬ 
tion will be required to realize this 
effort of man! In every situation, 
however, the passage along it is easy 
and uninterrupted; and it serves as 
a military way from one end of the 
kingdom to the other. At proper 
intervals there are strong towers 
placed, from whence signals are re¬ 
peated, and an alarm may be com¬ 
municated to the most distant parts 
of the empire, with the expedition 
of the telegraph.— Macartney. 

Ninevah was 15 miles by 9, and 
40 round, with walls 100 feet high, 
and thick enough for three chariots 
abreast. 

Babylon was 60 miles within the 
walls, which were 75 feet thick, and 
300 high, with 100 brazen gates. 

The temple of Diana, at Ephesus 
was 425 feet long and 200 broad, with 
127 columns, 60 feet high, to support 
the roof. It was 220 years building. 

The largest of the pyramids is 481 
feet high, and 693 feet on the sides; 
its base covers 11 acres. The stones 
are above 30 feet in length, and the 
layers are 208; 360,000 men were 
employed in its erection. 

The labyrinth of Egypt contained 
3000 chambers, and 12 halls. 

Thebes, in Egypt, presents ruins 
27 miles round. It had 100 gates. 

Carthage was 25 miles round. 

Athens was 25 miles round, and 
contained 25,000 citizens, and 400,- 
000 slaves. 

The temple of Delphos was so rich 
in donations, that it was once plun¬ 


231 

dered of 10,000 talents, or 2 i mil¬ 
lions sterling; and Nero carried from 
it 500 statues. 

The walls of Rome were 13 miles. 

The length of Solomon’s Temple, 
built between the years 1014 and 
1005, was 60 cubits, or 107 feet, the 
breadth 20 or 36 feet, and the height 
30 or 54 feet. The porch was 20 
cubits, or 36 feet long, and the 
breadth 10 cubits or 18 feet. 

The Temple of Solomon, though 
extolled as one of the wonders of the 
ancient world, did not surpass our 
larger sort of private houses. The 
generality of the habitations then, 
were probably no better than what 
we call huts, or cottages.— Smith’s 
Michaclis. 

The Temple of Ephesus, in which 
stood a mean statue, in wood, repre¬ 
senting a female with many paps, 
was dedicated to Diana, and rebuilt 
seven times. In 356, the day Alex¬ 
ander was born, it was burnt by an 
incendiary. To rebuild it employed 
220 years. It was 425 feet long, and 
225 broad, supported by 127 columns, 
60 feet high, furnished bv princes, and 
curiously sculptured, each weighing 
150 tons of Parian marble. Inter¬ 
nally it was decorated with gold, 
paintings, and statues by the great 
masters—Scopas, Apelles, Praxi¬ 
teles, Parrhasius, and the female 
Timarete. The priests were emas¬ 
culated, and the sacred virgins were 
of the highest birth. It was finally 
destroyed by the Goths in 260. The 
Turks, in 1300, finished the over¬ 
throw of all its edifices, and it is 
now deserted for Ajasoleck, two 
miles distant. 

The Temple of Baalbeck, in Syria, 
was famous for its devotion to Baal, 
or the Sun, but is now in ruins. The 
outer court, covered with architec¬ 
tural ruins, 1 is 180 feet in diameter. 
There is then a square of 350 feet, 
and, on its west side, six enormous 
columns, the peristyle of the grand 
temple, once 54 in number, 21 feet 
round, and 72 high. There is also a 
smaller temple, with 21 columns, 15 
feet round, and 44 high. The stones 
of the walls are 30 feet long and 9 
deep, and three are 58 feet long and 
12 deep. 

Catacombs are large vaults, with 
galleries and chambers, in which 




232 


BUILDING, &c. 


many nations, in certain periods of 
their history, were accustomed to 
deposit the dead. The Egyptians 
were the most anxious on this sub¬ 
ject, and the practice appears to have 
been continued by them, for at least 
3 or 4000 years. They embalmed 
the bodies, and, under the influence 
of superstition, prepared them for 
long endurance. Their catacombs 
were covered with paintings in 
fresco, thousands of which are still 
as perfect and fresh as though they 
were painted within the passing 
year. M. Belzoni constructed the 
fac-simile of one in London of the 
natural size, with all its paintings, 
hieroglyphicks, and other appurte¬ 
nances. The bodies have for the 
most part been displayed for various 
objects of avarice; and another 
superstition led the physicians of 
Europe, for several ages, to prescribe 
mummies as a medicinal drug. 
Rome also has its catacombs of 
vast extent; and Paris and Syra¬ 
cuse have others, but no mummies. 

Among the Romans and the 
eastern nations, bathing was a con¬ 
stant and costly luxury, and warm 
bathing generally prevailed; while, 
to indulge in it, every refinement of 
architecture and ornament was 
exerted. The publick baths had 5 
or 6 apartments for dressing and un¬ 
dressing, and they were called 
Thermae. In Rome, there were 856 
publick baths; single ones of which 
could accommodate 1800 persons at 
once. The Mahomedans consider 
frequent bathing as a religious duty, 
so that every house has its bathing 
apartments, and every village its 
publick bath. Warm and hot bath¬ 
ing are also very general in Rus¬ 
sia and Hungary. All these prac¬ 
tices are so essential to vigorous and 
healthy animalization, that there is 
wisdom in the religion that enforces 
them as a duty. A clean skin is as 
necessary to health as food, or lungs, 
or alvine evacuations. 

Twelve great roads diverged from 
ancient Rome, and spread all over 
the empire, there being 12 branches 
near the city, and 18 others in Italy. 
Napoleon’s great road over Mount 
Cenis declines 1 inch in 20; and that 
over the Simplon, made in 1805, de¬ 
clines 1 in 29. It has several tun¬ 


nels, and the longest is about 500 
feet. 

The chariots of the ancients were 
like our one-horse chaises, or phae¬ 
tons. Close carriages began to be 
used by personsof the highest quali¬ 
ty in the 14th and 15th century. 
Paris had three in 1550, and Henry 
IV. one, but without straps or 
springs; and, in the same age, there 
were 36 at Warsaw, drawn by six 
horses. In sundry places men were 
forbidden to ride in them, as effemi¬ 
nate. They were first made in Eng¬ 
land in the reign of Elizabeth, and 
were then called whirlicotes. The 
Duke of Buckingham, in 1619, drove 
six horses; and the Duke of Nor¬ 
thumberland, in rivalry, drove eight. 
They were first let for hire in Paris, 
in 1650, at the Hotel Fiacre; and 
hence their name. In London, they 
were first let for hire in 1625, and 
were 20 in number; in 1637, they 
were limited to 50; and, at the re¬ 
storation, 400 were licensed. In 
1830,1200 coaches and chariots, and 
200 cabriolets. In 1800, the number 
of four-wheeled carriages in Great 
Britain was 17,992 : \wo-wheeled 
carriages, 14,771; and tux-carts, 16,- 
968. 

The construction of temples was 
adapted by the ancients to the na¬ 
ture and functions of the deities. 
Those of Jupiter Fulminans, Coe- 
lum, the Sun, Moon, and Deus-Fi- 
dius, were uncovered. The temples 
of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, 
were of the Dorick order, which suit¬ 
ed the robust virtue of these divini¬ 
ties. The Corinthian was employed 
for Venus, Flora, Proserpine, and 
the aquatick Nymphs. The Ionick 
was used in the temples of Juno,, 
Diana and Bacchus, as a just mix¬ 
ture of elegance and majesty. 

The first habitation of mankind 
were cabins, grottoes, or caves. Vir¬ 
gil says, that before Troy and Per- 
gamean citadels existed, men dwelt 
in the bottoms of valleys. Some of 
these early cavern-dwellings exist at 
Ispica, in Sicily; and, being the 
works of men little removed from a 
state of nature, are of the most re¬ 
mote antiquity. Gellio, son of Coelus, 
first invented mud-buildings, from a 
martin’s nest; and Plutarch men¬ 
tions cottages, as made of frame- 






233 


BUILDING, &c. 


work and mud. Before the inven¬ 

tion of brick-houses, by Euryalus 
and Hyperbius, caves were used. 
The flat roofs of the private buildings 
distinguished them from the publick 
edifices. All the chambers in the 
houses at Pompeii, and the best, 
those entirely painted, received light 
only by the doors. Neither the 
rooms nor houses have any kind of 
symmetry; even a Mosaick pavement 
has been seen to descend towards 
the door. The only house with two 
stories ever discovered, is at Pom¬ 
peii. The stories consist of arches 
over each other. 

The roofs of houses, among the 
ancients and eastern nations, are 
flat; and they often sleep upon them, 
and have gardens upon them. The 
Greeks gave the roof a small eleva¬ 
tion in the middle; the Romans in¬ 
creased it to a fifth of the span. The 
Germans, and other northerns, make 
the roof an equilateral triangle. 

Forums were places originall y des¬ 
tined to negotiation, either of mer¬ 
chants or others, whose dealings 
took place in the open air. They 
were generally surrounded by a co¬ 
lonnade, over which was sometimes 
a second, for the convenience of 
those who wished to view the shows, 
for the forum was also the scene of 
the gladiatorial combats, before the 
invention of amphitheatres. Basi- 
licae were subsequently added, for 
the protection of litigants, and deci¬ 
sion of causes under shelter. No 
city, however small, was without 
its forum. It was a market-place 
for all kinds of goods, whether of 
rusticks or citizens. Under its porti¬ 
coes were exercised all sorts of 
trades,liberal, servile, or sordid; and 
within them were arranged the 
bankers’ shops and coffee-houses. 
In the forum was also the senate- 
house, the curia for the assemblies 
of Augustals (similar to our common 
council) and priests for cognizance 
of sacred matters, the Comitia for 
assemblies of the people, the A5ra- 
rium, or Treasury, Record-office, 
and publick granaries.— Fosbrooke. 

Winckelman, quoting the comedies 
of Plautus and Terence, observes, 
that Grecian doors opened outwards; 
so that a person leaving the house 
knocked first within, lest he should 
open the door in the face of a pas¬ 


senger, Hinges were not then in use} 
and at Rome, Pompeii, and Hercula¬ 
neum, doors, even of marble, have at 
top and bottom pivots, which turn 
in sockets. 

Rome was supplied with water by 
13,594 pipes from the aqueducts. 

Towns originally were fortresses, 
to which rusticks retired with their 
cattle, when there was danger from 
the incursion of enemies. 

The Caaba, now the Temple of 
Mecca, was the ancient Temple ot 
the Arabs, with 360 idols, one foi 
every degree, and the statue of Hobab, 
with seven arrows for the planets. 
This worship was established by 
Saba, the eighth from Noah, who 
called himself Servant of the Sun, and 
was Sabeanism ,which once extended 
over Asia. They built temples to 
the seven planets, the 12 signs, and 
24 principal constellations. They 
reverenced the Book of Seth, who 
divided the zodiack, taught the as¬ 
pects, assigned the virtues of the 
planets, &c. Job was of this coun¬ 
try, and the chief race of their kings 
was called Tobba. Hence, in Job, 
the references to Arcturus, the Plei¬ 
ades, &c. It is now called El Ha- 
ram, or Inviolable. In the north¬ 
east corner is the tomb of Mahomet, 
surrounded by an iron-green railing, 
interwoven with inscriptions, in 
filigree of yellow bronze, of “La 
Illaha il Allah al hak al Mobyn,” 
meaning “ There is no God but 
God,” in silver letters. The railing 
and its ornaments are so close, that 
there are small windows to look 
through. Persons of rank are per¬ 
mitted to go within the railing, 
where nothing is seen but a curtain, 
which covers a square building of 
black stones; in the interiour of which 
are the tombs of Mahomet, Abu Be- 
ker and Omar, the largest being Ma¬ 
homet’s. The coffins are below; 
and that of Mahomet is cased in 
silver, with an inscription, “ In the 
name of God bestow mercy upon 
him.” The stones, or tomb in the 
centre, have rich coverings. The 
curtain round them is 30 feet high, 
and these articles, when changed, 
are sent as a present to every new 
Grand Seignior to cover the tomb of 
his predecessor, and he returns new 
ones in exchange. On this subject 
how much Christian credulity, and 







m 


even philosophical credulity, have 
been abused by the monkish story 
about the loadstone, and the suspen¬ 
sion of the coffin by one. Burck- 
hardt, who gives the above descrip¬ 
tion, says he was laughed at when 
he mentioned this silly legend. 


BUILDING, &c. 


Sir Richard Hoare caused several 
barrows, near Stonehenge, to be 
opened in 1808. In them were found 
a number of curious remains of Cam¬ 
brian ornaments, such as beads, 
buckles, and brooches, in amber, 
wood, and gold. 


The Caaba itself is a stone edifice 
in the temple, of extreme antiquity, 
and held in such sanctity that the Ma¬ 
hometans, in their prayers always di¬ 
rect their faces towards it. The floor 
is raised six feet, and a door and win¬ 
dow admit light. They say it was 
built by Adam, and rebuilt by Abra¬ 
ham and Ishmael; and they show 
the place where he stood, now en¬ 
closed with iron; also the tomb of 
Ishmael, and a black stone, given 
by Gabriel to Mahomet. Every 
Mussulman must once visit the Caa¬ 
ba, and, in consequence, thousands 
of pilgrims visit it annually. The 
ceremonies are, walking seven times 
round the Caaba, kissing the black 
stone, &c. &c.; ceremonies used for 
ages before Mahomet by the Sa- 
beans, but enjoined by him. 

Barrow is the name of those cir¬ 
cular mounds found in Britain and 
other countries, to record a burial on 
the spot. Their size is supposed to 
be proportioned to the rank and 
means of the party. The Kings of 
Egypt built pyramids. The largest 
in England is that of Silbury-hill, 
near Marlborough ; in Scotland, they 
are called Cairns ; and, in England, 
they have sunk to the modest grave. 
The Greeks made large barrows; 
but the largest, next to the pyramids, 
are those of the Kings of Lydia. One 
of these is three-quarters of a mile 
round. Even the savages in America 
erect similar monuments, and some 
of great size. In Scotland and Wales 
they are often made of stones ; and 
the Jews had a custom of the kind. 
Those which have been opened in 
England contained skeletons, urns, 
and warlike implements. It has been 
supposed, that they were so placed 
as to serve as signal stations; but, 



Barrows are the most ancient se- 
ulchres; but, lest the relicks should 
e violated by enemies, the custom 
of burning the dead commenced with 
Sylla, and did not fall into disuse till 
the time of Macrobius. 


Adrian’s wall, from the Forth to 
the Clyde, was built in 120, of turf. 
Antonius, another, in 140; and Se- 
verus, one of Stone, in 208. It had 
a ditch to the north 40 feet wide, and 
20 deep, and the wall was 20 feet 
high and 24 thick. It extended *36 i 
miles, and joined 21 Roman forts. 

The Piets’ wall extends from New¬ 
castle to Bowness, on the Solway 
Firth. It was originally of turf; but, 
in 416, was rebuilt of stone. 

Caer-leon, or Caer-Llion, near 
Newport, in Monmouthshire, was, 
beyond question, a British city of 
considerable size and splendour. It 
is now reduced to a few houses ; but 
the vicinity is covered with founda¬ 
tions, and the plough turns up nume¬ 
rous antiquities of all ages. 

There are two periods in British 
architecture :—1. the Cyclopean; 2. 
the Roman. Of the former style, 
Stonehenge is the chief existing mo¬ 
nument ; and there can be little doubt 
but that this circle is the Temple of 
the Sun in Britain, mentioned by 
Diodorus. It is circular, as were all 
Temples of the Sun and Vesta. The 
adyl'am, or sanctum sanctorum, is 
oval, representing the mundane egg, 
after the manner that all those adyta, 
in which the sacred fire perpetually 
blazed, were constantly fabricated. 
The situation is fixeclastronomically; 
the grand entrance, and that of 
Abury, being placed exactly north¬ 
east, as all the gates or portals of the 
ancient cavern temples were, espe¬ 
cially- those dedicated to Mithra, the 
Sun. The number of stones and up¬ 
rights in the outward circles, making 
together exactly sixty, plainly alludes 
to that peculiar and. prominent fea¬ 
ture of Asiatick astronomy, the sexa¬ 
genary cycle; while the number of 
stones, forming the minor cycle of 
the cove, being exactly 19, displays 
to us the famous Metonick, or rather 
Indian cycle ; and that of 30 repeat¬ 
edly occurring, the number of de¬ 
grees in the signs of the Zodiack. 
Further, the temple being uncovered 





235 


BUILDING, &c. 


proves it to have been erected full 
500 years before Christ, before the 
age of Zoroaster, who first covered 
in the Persian temples. Finally the 
heads and horns of oxen and other 
animals, found buried in the spot, 
prove that the sanguinary rites, pe¬ 
culiar to the solar superstition, were 
actually practised within the bounds 
of this hallowed circle. The present 
Stonehenge was, no doubt, revived 
by Ambrosius about 460. 

A green walk surrounds Stone¬ 
henge, made on purpose for the 
Deasnil, or going three times round 
it, a druidical custom, afterwards 
practised in Ireland even with regard 
to Christian churches. 

There seems little reason to think 
but that stone circles were Cyclopean 
Temples of the Sun, founded before 
the invention of the orders ; and, like 
all temples, used for publick purposes 
when necessary. 

Cromlechs, or large stones, placed 
in the fashion of a table, but in an in¬ 
clining position, upon others smaller, 
with or without stone circles an¬ 
nexed, are generally deemed altar- 
stones. 

Rocking-stones are supposed to 
have been used in divination, the vi¬ 
brations determining the oracle. 

Diodorus Siculus speaks of the 
houses of the Britons as built of 
wood ; the w'alls made of stakes and 
wattling, like hurdles, and thatched 
with either reeds or straw. (Wattled 
chimneys still occur in Wales.) After¬ 
wards the dwellings were improved. 
Some set up strong stakes in the 
banks of earth, as well as large 
stones, rudely laid on each other with¬ 
out mortar. Strabo says, that the 
fashion was round, with a high- 
pointed covering at top ; and Caesar, 
that they resembled the Gaulish 
houses, and were only lighted by the 
door. That this was perfectly cor¬ 
rect appears from the representations 
of them on the Antonine column, 
where they are either cylinders, with 
an arched lofty entrance, single or 
double, or exact fac-similes of great 
tea-canisters in grocers’ shops; the 
orifice, where the lid shuts, being 
(according to Henry) for emission 
of smoke. Strutt says, that they 
were built at some distance from 
each other, not in streets, generally 


on the banks of a river for water, or 

in woods, &c. where forage might be 
found for the cattle. The prince 
chose the most convenient, and his 
followers erected theirs around, as 
well as stalls for the cattle; a ditch 
and mound of earth, or rampart, sur¬ 
rounded the whole. 

Sammes, speaking of the first 
church of Glastonbury, says thus: 
“ The walls of the church were made 
of twigs, winded and twisted to¬ 
gether, after the ancient custome, in 
which kings’ palaces were used to be 
built. So the King of Wales, by 
name Heolus Wha, in the year 940, 
built a house of white twigs, to retire 
into when he came a hunting into 
South Wales; therefore it was called 
Tv Guyn, that is, the White House , 
for he caused the twigs to be barkt. 
Castles themselves, in those daies, 
were framed of the same materials, 
and weaved together; for thus writes 
Giraldus Cambrensis, of Pembroke 
Castle; Arnulphus de Montgomery 
(saith he), in the daies qfKing Henry 
the first, built that small castle of 
twigs and slight turffi Such reed 
houses as these we see in Ireland , and 
in many places in England. 

As to the second period, the Ro¬ 
manized Britons in the time of Con¬ 
stantine, were builders of the best 
description, and built houses, tem¬ 
ples, courts, and market-places in 
the towns, with every Roman accom¬ 
paniment of Mosaick pavements, sa¬ 
loons, and porticoes. 

British Castles were strong, forti¬ 
fied, very tall houses, built upon the 
top of a hill or mount, with gates and 
walls, both of brick and stone. 

The Anglo-Saxon Castles consist¬ 
ed of a round or square tower-keep, 
ascended by a direct flight of steps 
in front. 

The Danish Castles had round 
keeps upon conical hills, of clay, 
lime, or stone. The fossatum was 
generally a conical. rising ground. 
The first entrenchment was made 
round the top, and the earth thrown 
round the hill. On the side of the 
fort which was lowest, they raised 
terraces and artificial banks. 

Norman Castles were Anglo-Sax¬ 
on, enlarged and improved into a 
GundulfKeep, like that of Rochester, 
built by Bishop Gundulf, an eminent 





m 


BUILDING, &.c. 


with earth, to guard against the can¬ 

non. Archers, mixed with cross* 
bow-men and men-at-arms, were 
posted upon the gates and ramparts 

The fortified castles, with which 
England was covered, previous to 
the order of the long parliament for 
their destruction, were chiefly built 
between the time of the conquest and 
the reign of Edward III. It is said, 
that, in Stephen’s reign, between 80 
and 90 years after the conquest, no 
less than 1115 had been built. They 
were places of security, in which the 
Norman usurpers and baronial op¬ 
pressors might insult the people with 
impunity ; and the same thing was 
done in Ireland so late as the age of 
Charles I. 

Stone buildings, says William of 
Malmsbury, were deemed miracu¬ 
lous by the Britons, as thatched and 
wattled work obtained among them. 

The Lancet arch is the oldest form 
of arch known in the east; and the 
Ogee , or pointed arch, with convex 
curvatures, is also common and an 
cient in the east. The lancet arch 
is also seen in aqueducts built by 
Trajan. Columns and intersecting 
arches (found in France at the end 
of the eighth century, and common 
here in the twelfth), occur in a Ro¬ 
man pavement found at Louth. The 
flat-pointed arch of the 15th century 
is twice seen at Pompeii, as w r ell as 
the reeded column.— Fosbrooke. 

Ancient Chinese bridges, of great 
magnitude, are built with stone 
arches, exactly like those which have 
been considered as a Roman inven¬ 
tion. 

The pointed arch appears, but not 
as a fashion, so early as the reign of 
Edgar. About the reign of Henry 
II. occur the pointed obtuse arch, 
and round the arch often intermixed 
or alternate. 

In the beginning of the 13th cen¬ 
tury, the Gothick style seems to 
have been completely established. 
In this early style, the arches dif¬ 
fered very much, but were usually 
sharply pointed; the windows long, 
narrow, and lancet-shaped, and fre¬ 
quently decorated in the inside, and 
sometimes on the outside also, with 
slender shafts, frequently with fas¬ 
ciae round them, and the capitals 
with foliage.— Lysons. 


architect. It was entered by a grand 
staircase, which went partly round 
two of the outside fronts of the castle, 
and ended in a grand portal, before 
which was a drawbridge. On the 
floor where was the principal en¬ 
trance, there were no windows or 
lights whatever; not even loop-holes 
on the same side as the entrance and 
top of the staircase. The extreme 
inconvenience of including the offices 
of a large establishment in the nar¬ 
row dimensions of a single tower, 
rendered it either habitable only as a 
temporary thing under warfare, or 
with adjuncts, as kitchens, suites of 
rooms, &c. The garrison, after de¬ 
fending the walls, upon their demo¬ 
lition fled to the keep. Hence old 
keeps were surrounded with a court 
of high walls, furnished with angular 
towers; and one of the corner towers 
was made of the strength and fashion 
of a keep. 

Castles were divided into single, 
double, or treble, according to the 
ditches; and these ditches, of course, 
regulated the number of bridges. 
High artificial mounts are not indis¬ 
pensable of Norman keeps. The 

S ite-house had sometimes no less 
an three gates and two portcullises. 
Above the gateway was the guard- 
room, with a windlass for winding 
up the portcullis ; and beneath it, a 
dungeon for imprisoning offenders. 
From the gate-house, a communi¬ 
cation, within the wall, only wide 
enough for one man to pass, went 
round the whole fabrick. 

A postern is a door into the ditch 
of a fortification. The garrison and 
servants slept upon trusses of straw, 
and were crowded together without 
any external communication with 
light or air. The towers, in which 
the ladies resided, were very obscure 
and safe; and they and prisoners of 
war took airings upon the leads. 
The sentinels on castle-ward had a 
horn, and watched both day and 
night, crying, upon alarm, “ Trea¬ 
son.” At night a guard was kept by 
listening, and even circumambula- 
tion of patroles. Under expectation 
of a siege, the gates were stopped up 
with casks filled with earth. All the 
horses were sent away, the dogs 
killed, the women and children lodged 
in the church, and the houses near 
the walls pulled down and covered 




MODERN BUILDINGS, &c. 237 


The naves of churches were not 

always paved, whence the use of 
rushes, for warmth and better kneel¬ 
ing. Men used to stand on the right 
hand, or south side; women on the 
left, or north. 

The nimbus, or glory, drawn by 
painters round the neads of saints, 
&c. was first used by the Caesars 
and their flatterers. 


Church-towers were originally pa¬ 
rochial fortresses. 

Monasteries had appendages to 
their churches of various kinds, as 
cloisters, the general resort of the 
monks, furnished with carrels, or 
pews for writing, and lavatories, 
where they washed; refectories, or 
fratries, large wainscoted halls, with 
a crucifixion above the boards, a 
dresser, almories or cupboards, win¬ 
dows opening into the kitchen, 
through which the meal was served, 
and desk with a Bible for reading 
during the dinner. Chapter-rooms, 
with rows of stone benches, one 
above another, a crucifix, a reading 
desk and bench, and higher seat for 
the abbot: Dormitories, long rooms, 
with wainscoted partitions for each 
bed, to every one a window, and in 
each window a desk to support their 
books.— Fosbrooke. 


Stone crosses owed their origin 
to marking the druid stones with 
crosses, in order to change the wor¬ 
ship without breaking the prejudice. 

Timber, with lath and plaster, 
and thatch for the roofs, constituted 
the chief materials in the dwellings 
of the English from an early period 
till near tne close of the 14th cen¬ 
tury and beginning of the 15th, when 
bricks began to be used in the better 
sort of houses. 


The Britons had no bedrooms, 
but, according to the customs of the 
ancient Welch and Highlanders, 
slept on the floor on mats, in one 
common room. The bed-rooms and 
upper chambers of the Anglo-Saxons 
were vaulted, bolted, furnished with 
a chest and a round back chair by 
the side of the bed, adorned with silk 
palls and hangings. 

Fire-places were arched hearths 
among the Anglo-Saxons. Medias- 
tini were fire-places in the centre, 
and holes for the escape of smoke. 
At Cheveley-park, Cambridgeshire, 


is a fire-place in the form of pantiles. 
Reredosses, and chafing-dishes, were 
most usual till the general use of 
chimneys. Leland, speaking of Bol¬ 
ton Castle, built temp. Richard II. 
says, “one thynge I much notyd in 
the haulle of Bolton ; how chimneys 
were conveyed by tunnels made on 
the syds of the wauls betwyxt the 
lights in the hawle; and by this 
means, and by no covere, is the 
smoke of the narthc in the hawls 
wonder strangely convayed.” 

Transparent windows were, in the 
time of Seneca, quite novel. Stubbs 
ascribes the introduction of stone 
and glass windows in England to 
Wulfrid, Bishop of Worcester, in 736. 

Bow-bridge, built 1118, is the first 
in England of stone; but those of 
wood, fortified with planks and mer- 
lined, were common. 


MODERN BUILDINGS AND 

MISCELLANEOUS ESTAB¬ 
LISHMENTS. 

The first dwellings of mankind 
were natural caves, excavations in 
rocks, or holes in the ground, such 
as are now found in savage countries. 
The first structures were of wood 
and clay, then of rough stones, and, 
finally, of dried ana burnt bricks. 
When building became a separate 
employment, ornaments and taste 
arose, in which every people pursued 
different systems. In Syria and Asia 
the oldest fashions still prevail. In 
the extensive city of Damascus, for 
example, the houses are of the colour 
of clay, resembling the meanest cot¬ 
tages in Britain, and built after the 
form of those at Jerusalem, of the 
most perishable materials, viz. bricks 
which have been dried not by fire, 
but the heat of the sun. During wet 
weather, the slough arising from 
them renders the streets almost im¬ 
passable. Few of the houses have 
floors of wood. In building, the 
plan is to fix nails or pins of wood 
in the walls while still soft, to sus¬ 
pend domestick articles, since they 
are too frail to permit the operation 
of a hammer. There are few win¬ 
dows. The houses are flat on the 
roof like a terrace, which is spread 
over with a kind of plaster, and 





238 


MODERN BUILDINGS, &c. 


made firm with a roller. Many of 
these are surrounded with mud-walls 
or battlements, four feet high, to pre¬ 
vent accidents. Several domestick 
offices are performed on these roofs, 
such as drying linen, flax, &c. In¬ 
deed, a person disposed to make his 
escape from any pursuit, might, by 
stepping from house to house, reach 
the walls of the city. The apart¬ 
ments in houses of a superiour class 
are in the back part, where the in¬ 
mates are in a state of complete se¬ 
clusion. There is a large quadran¬ 
gular court, finely paved with marble, 
ornamented with plants and foun¬ 
tains of water. During great heats, 
a kind of awning, or veil, is spread 
over the top of these courts. The 
floors of the apartments are covered 
with carpets, with large couches like 
woolsacks, and pillows, where the 
Turks are seen reclining at their 
ease, smoking and indulging in every 
gratification. In front of the streets 
the houses have few or no windows, 
but appear like blank walls, similar 
to those in Jerusalem, in which there 
is a gate or wicket, so small as to 
require those who enter to stoop very 
low. They are secured with wooden 
bolts, and keys of the same form as 
those at Jerusalem. In Persia, &c. 
the houses in towns have flat roofs, 
with gardens on them, sleeping 
places, &c. 

The Japanese build upon one floor, 
and their rooms are parted by their 
folding-screens, so that they can en¬ 
large or contract them at pleasure. 

John-o’-Groat’s house, in Caith¬ 
ness, the most northern part of Bri¬ 
tain, is celebrated from that circum¬ 
stance, and from its being an octa¬ 
gon shape, with a large table in the 
centre to accommodate the eight 
branches of the builder’s family, and 

{ >revent disputes about the upper and 
ower end, there being also a door 
leading to each side. 

The Needle of Cleopatra, and 
Pompey’s Pillar, are colossal objects, 
which have been celebrated for ages, 
and excited just admiration for ex¬ 
quisite workmanship and antiquity, 
and formed one solid block of red 
granite, originally conveyed from 
the quarries in Upper Egypt, near 
the cataracts, and situated, close to 
the shore. They are each about 70 
feet in height, from 180 to 190 tons in 


weight, and upwards of seven feet 

square at the base. The four sides 
are richly adorned with hieroglyph- 
icks, sculptured one inch in depth. 

Among the splendid tombs, in 
Agra, is that of the wife of Sha-ge- 
han, which employed 20,000 artists 
and workmen for 22 years. It is of 
black and white marble, and has 
three platforms, with four towers, 
and a magnificent dome. 

The Theatres of Paris, in 1829, 
yielded 6,159,703 francs, about 250,- 
000Z. sterling, or 800Z. per night in 
13 theatres. The proportional re¬ 
ceipts of the Opera Comique were 
7.6. Equestrian Theatre, 6.5. Aca¬ 
demy of Musick, Theatre Francais 
and Varieties, and Theatre de Ma¬ 
dame, each 6. The Government for 
Publick Instruction and Morals, 
grants one million of francs to the 
Opera, and 540,000 to four others. 

Two London Theatres Royal re¬ 
ceived 300Z. per night for 200 nights, 
or 60,000/. The Opera, 50 nights, 
800/., or 40,000/.; and eight minor 
Theatres, for 200 nights, 150/. each, 
or 300,000/. 

The Boxes of Drury-lane Theatre 
hold 1200 auditors ; tne pit, 860; the 
first gallery, 480; and the second 
280; making, with performers, &c. 
3000 in a full theatre. 

The Italian Opera-house, London, 
will hold 1500/. 

Drury-lane and Covent-garden 
Theatres, previously to 1790, held 
400/. Since then they have been 
enlarged, so as to hold from 550/. to 
600/. A third of the box audience 
consists of free admissions or orders. 
Pantomime and show-pieces, in the 
time of Garrick and Rich, cost from 
2 to 3000/.; and latterly they have 
cost more, but pay best. 

The Seraglio, at Constantinople, 
is on the eastern point. The area is 
150 acres, enclosed with high walls. 
The entrance from the west is called 
the Sublime Porte, a name frequent¬ 
ly given to the whole government. 
The second gate is called the Gate 
of Happiness, and in its splendid 
buildings are lodged from 5 to 600 
females, guarded by eunuchs. There 
is also an old seraglio in the centre 
of the city, where are kept the wives 
and concubines of former sultans. 
At a short distance from the Sub- 




_ WORKS 

lime Porte stands the ancient Chris¬ 
tian Church of St. Sophia, built by- 
Justinian ; and since the Mahome¬ 
tan conquest, in 1453, used as an 
imperial mosque. It abounds in cu¬ 
riosities. Its length is 269 feet, and 
its breadth 243 feet. Six of its pil¬ 
lars are of green jasper, from the 
Temple of Diana, at Ephesus; and 
eight of porphyry, from the Temple 
of the Sun, at Rome. 

The country residence of the Rus¬ 
sian sovereigns is 22 wersts, on the 
road to Novogorod, and is called the 
Czarskoselo. It is a large and very 
splendid palace, where the imperial 
family have resided for the last 70 
years. 

The Vatican, a magnificent palace, 
in Rome, is said to consist of 7000 
rooms. It is advantageously situated 
on an eminence, one of the seven 
hills on which ancient Rome was 
built. The parts the most admired 
are, the grand staircase, the pope’s 
apartments; and, above all, the Vati¬ 
can library, so beautiful a fabrick, that 
it is said it will admit of no improve¬ 
ment, and also the richest in the 
world, both in printed boojls and 
manuscripts. 

The New Palace, in St. James’s 
Park, was estimated at 432,926/. 
450,000/. was granted, in 1824-5, for 
repairing and improving Windsor 
Castle, one of the noblest royal pa¬ 
laces in Europe. 

But the most superb palace in Eu¬ 
rope is that of Versailles, about 
12 miles from Paris, built by Louis 
XIV.; and next to it are the series 
of Parisian Palaces, the Louvre and 
the Thuilleries, all of vast extent and 
splendour. 

Aranjuez is a palace of the Kings 
of Spain, 20 miles from Madrid. Its 
gardens arc watered by the Tagus, 
and are very fine. 

Lighthouses were erected by all 
ancient commercial people, and call¬ 
ed Tors, or pillars, as those of Her¬ 
cules, near Gibraltar; that of Pharos, 
at Alexandria, 550 feet high, and 
visible 42 miles; the Colossus, at 
Rhodes; the Pharos, of Messina, &c. 


OF ART. _ 23 9 

Paulo Veronese, Tintoret, and Bas- 

sano. The Bolognese School con¬ 
sisted of the Caraccis, Domenichino, 
and their disciples. The chief Fle¬ 
mish Painters were Rubens, Van¬ 
dyke, Rembrandt, Teniers, Van- 
goyen, Ruysdael, and Vanderneer. 

The Founders of the British School 
were Thornhill, Richardson, Ho¬ 
garth, Wilson, Gainsborough, Rey¬ 
nolds, Barry, and West. 

The Artists of the French School 
were Poussin, Claude Lorraine, Ver- 
net, and David. 

The two great Painters of the 
Spanish School are Murillo and 
Velasquez. 

The earliest known Painters are 
Cimabue, Chirlandao, Massacio 
Quintin Matys, and Albert Durer. 

The greatest Painters, in order, 
were Raphael, Michael Angelo, Cor- 
regio, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, 
Guido, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van 
dyke, Teniers, Murillo, Carracci, 
Claude, N. Poussin, and Carlo 
Dolce. 

The oldest known painting is a 
Madonna and Child, in 886. The 
oldest known paintings, in England, 
are the portrait of Chaucer, painted 
on pannel about 1390, and that of 
Henry IV., in 1405. 

The English Painters, in the order 
of genius, are Hogarth, Wilson, 
Gainsborough, Lawrence, West, 
Reynolds, Martin, Turner, and Wil¬ 
kie. 

The Royal Academy was esta¬ 
blished in 1768, and consists of a 
president, 5 professors, 3 secretaries, 
37 academicians, 17 associates, and 
6 associate engravers. Their annual 
exhibition contains about 1300 sub¬ 
jects, and yields about 2000Z. or 
2500/. 

The British Institution for the 
Fine Arts, in Pall-mall, was esta¬ 
blished in 1805. 

There are also Royal Academies 
at Dublin and Edinburgh; and As¬ 
sociations for Exhibitions at Liver¬ 
pool, Birmingham, Leeds, &c. &e. 


WORKS OF ART. 

The principal painters of the Vene¬ 
tian School were—Titian,Georgione, 


London has a National Gallery of 
Master-pieces of all the Schools, and 
greatest artists in each. The pictures 
of Mr. Angerstein were its founda- 





240 


LITERATURE, &c. 


tion; and many others have been 
added since of great value. 

There are two funds for artists. 

The Panorama, invented by Bar¬ 
ker, is generally about 60 feet in 
diameter. 

Albert Durer etched some of his 
engravings on steel. A soft steel 
plate will take 20,000 good impres¬ 
sions, and a hard steel plate 100,000. 

There were in London, in 1818, 
painters, 532; sculptors, 45; archi¬ 
tects, 149; engravers, 2060; and 
they are, in 1831,10 per cent. more. 

Painting in oil, distemper, or 
water is when the colours are mixed 
with oil, size, or water. Fresco is 
on a newly-plastered wall. Encaus- 
tick, is with wax; and enamel, with 
mineral colours, on metal. 

Varnish, for oil-paintings, is mas- 
tich, dissolved in spirits of wine. 
For other purposes, it is copal in 
spirits of turpentine, &c. The one 
may be rubbed off with the finger, 
as a white powder, the other not. 

Androides, to perform human ac¬ 
tions, have been made in all ages. 
Bacon made one to speak ; and Al- 
bertus Magnus spent 30 years in 
making another. The Writing An¬ 
droides is merely a pentograph, 
worked by a confederate out of sight. 
So also the Automaton Chess-player, 
and the Invisible Girl; but they are 
in general constructed of wheel- 
work. Yaucanson, in this way, 
made a Flute-player; Kempelen, the 
Chess-player and Speaking Figure. 
M. Mallardet and Mr. Hancock 
made many ; and, while they display 
great contrivance, they draw large 
sums from the credulous. 

Vaucanson made an artificial 
duck, which performed every func¬ 
tion of a real one, even an imperfect 
digestion, eating, drinking, and 
quacking. A coach and two horses, 
with a coachman, footman, page, 
and a lady inside, were made by 
Camus, for Louis XIV., when a 
child. The horses and figures mov j 
ed naturally,variously, and perfectly. 

Cotton-spinning machinery, and 
manufacturing machinery in gene¬ 
ral, are merely varieties of these in¬ 
ventions of Androides and toy- 
makers; a central power, with axles, 
wheels, cogs, ketches, ratchets, 


straps, lines, levers, screws, &c. 
&c. variously combined, constitute 
the wonders of Lancashire, York¬ 
shire, and Warwickshire. 


LITERATURE AND EDUCA¬ 
TION. 

Perception, memory, and reason¬ 
ing by analogy are faculties com¬ 
mon to all animals ; and, according 
to their perfection, they create de¬ 
grees of natural knowledge in- the 
several genera, species, and indi¬ 
viduals. But natural knowledge 
is personal and evanescent, without 
Records ; while, by their means, the 
knowledge of one generation is add¬ 
ed to another, and accumulates by a 
law of acceleration. The invention 
of conventional signs, characters, or 
letters, was therefore the first step 
to that accumulated knowledge 
which we now find in the world. 
The first examples were records of 
regal vanity; then their celebration 
in verse. The next, the regulation 
of reasoning in logick. The next, the 
observed motions of the heavenly 
bodies. The next, arithmetick and 
geometry. The next, geography, 
chronology, and history. The next, 
observations of nature, and the in 
vestigations of causes. But the free 
play of intellect proving injurious 
to monopolies of power, and the 
selfish advantages of superstition 
which had obtained ascendancy be¬ 
fore the invention of letters, these 
have always been opposed to the 
advance of knowledge, and have 
either limited or neutralized inquiry. 
The age has. therefore not yet arrived, 
when the pursuit of knowledge is 
perfectly free; and advancement has 
hitherto heen determined by limits 
authorized by power, or by preju¬ 
dices inculcated by power, and ope¬ 
rating directly or insidiously, so as 
to say to all pursuers of knowledge, 
—thus far mayest thou go, but no 
further. 

Troth, the Egyptian, who invent¬ 
ed writing, perhaps hieroglyphicks, 
lived between the years 2000 and 
2500 B. C. But Josephus says, he 
had seen inscriptions by Seth, the 
son of Adam. If so, then Troth, or 
Hermes, were not the inventors of 
writing, or Josephus must on this, 
as on many subjects, be fabulous. 







241 


LITERATURE, &c. 


The first letter of the Phoenician 

and Hebrew alphabet was Aleph, 
which the Greeks called Alpha; and 
the moderns, by abbreviation, A. 
They also used them to count; and, 
it is curious that tau , used by them 
for 100, is, in the games of English 
school-boys, the name of a white 
marble, worth many common ones. 
The word Alphabet is the names 
Alpha, Beta, just as we say the A, 
B, C. The Hebrew language and 
letters are believed to be derived 
from the Phoenician, since Tyre, 
Sidon, &c. were distinguished cities 
in the age of Moses and Joshua; 
even Abraham lived in their territory. 

Sanscrit is the basis of Hindoo 
learning, and said to be the first cha¬ 
racter. It is taught at Benares by 
pundits, or doctors ; and the pupils 
read the Puranas, or abridgements 
of the law, and study philosophy, 
like that of the Greek schools. 


vented by the Vizier Molach, A. D. 

933, in which he wrote the Koran 
three times. 

Armenian is used in Armenia, 
Asia Minor, Syria, Tartary, &c. 
It approaches the Chaldee or Sy- 
riack, and the Greek. 

Chaldee, Phoenician, or SyriacK, 
ascribed to Adam, Enoch, Noah, 
Abraham, and Moses, is the same 
as the Hebrew. 

The Coptick is an alphabet so 
called from Coptos, in Egypt, a 
mixture of Greek and Egyptian. 
The characters of the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians were of three kinds, vulgar, 
sacred, and hieroglyphick. 

Ethiopick, or Abyssinian, is derived 
from the Samaritan or Phoenician. 

The Etruscan was the first alpha¬ 
bet used in Italy, so called from the 
Etrusci, the most ancient inhabit¬ 
ants. 


The Hindoos have no less than 
nine sects of philosophers, whose 
principles embrace all the metaphy- 
sicks and speculations of the Greeks, 
and the objects of controversy 
among modern Europeans. Three 
of them are atheistical, and six are 
partly materialists and partly spi¬ 
ritualists in certain shades of differ¬ 
ence. No justice is done to their 
profundity in the crude or partizan 
reports of Europeans. 

The Welsh language, always re¬ 
gular and significant in its mono¬ 
syllables, uses the word pen, to sig¬ 
nify the top ; mawr, great; tre, for 
a house; aber, for the confluence of 
rivers; Avon for a river; care, for a 
fortification; Llan, an enclosure; ys, 
pronounced us, for lowtr; and uwch, 
for upper; coed, for a wood; cum, 
pronounced coom, signifies a deep 
valley; and yr, pronounced ur, is 
the article—the; and its constant 
repetition leads to the vulgar jokes 
about the yr or ur. Their nouns 
have no cases. 

The Welsh, or Bardick alphabet, 
consisted of 16 primitive or radical 
characters, and 24 secondary ones, 
formed by cutting letters on a stick 
in a triangular or square form. 

The most ancient Arabick, called 
the Kufick, is so named from Kufa, 
on the Euphrates, and not now in 
use. The modern Arabick was in- 
U 


Gothick, the most ancient charac¬ 
ters under this name, are attributed 
to Bishop Ulphilas. 

Cadmus, the Phoenician, intro¬ 
duced the first Greek alphabet into 
Boeotia, where he setttJed, B. C. 
1500 ; though Diodorus says the Pe- 
lasgian letters were prior to the Cad- 
mean. But it is evident that the 
Cadmean and Pelasgiack, and Phoe¬ 
nician, had the same origin. 

The Samaritan, or Phoenician, 
was the original Hebrew character; 
and the present alphabet was invent¬ 
ed after the captivity. 

The Irish alphabet is the Phoeni¬ 
cian. 

The Greeks called the Phoenicians 
Pelasgii quasi Pelagi, because they 
traversed the ocean, and carried on 
commerce with other nations. 

Scaliger supposes the Phoenician 
to have been the original Hebrew 
character, otherwise the Samaritan, 
which - is generally supposed to be 
that which was used by the Jews from 
the time of Moses to the Captivity. 

The alphabet of the Sanskrits, 
is called the Devanagari. 

The Oriental Alphabets are He¬ 
brew, ancient, modern, and rabbini¬ 
cal. Samaritan, ancient and modern. 
Phoenician. Syriack, ancient and 
modern. Egyptian, hieroglyphick. 
Chinese, characters. 




The Greek Alphabets were Cad- 
mean, Pelasgian, Sigean, Nemean, 
Delian, Athenian, and Teian. Also 
Ionick, or alphabet of Simonides. 

The alphabets derived from, or 
allied to, the Oriental Alphabets are, 
Cufick, Arabick, Persian, Saracen, 
Ethiopick, Mendean, Malabarick, 
Mantchou Tartar, Sanscrit, Japo- 
nese, Thibetan, Rejang. 

The Alphabets derived from the 
Oriental or Greek Alphabets are, 
Ancient Irish, Bobeloth and Beth- 
luisnon. Ogums, namely, Croabh 
and O’Sullivan’s Cop tick, Armenian, 
Georgian, Dalmatian, and Russian. 

The Northern Alphabets are, 
Gothick, ancient, modern, and 
Maeso-Gothick, Runick. Welsh. 
Saxon, ancient and modern. Teu- 
tonick. German, printing and cur¬ 
rent. Flemish. French, ancient 
and current. Norman and Anglo- 
Norman. Bastard, ancient and 
round. Lombard. Charlemagne. 
Black Letter. Chancery, round and 
running. Court Text. Church Text. 


The Alphabets of different nations 
contain the following letters:— 


English. 

• -26- 

Greek. 

•24 

French. 

• •23 

Hebrew, &c. 

•22 

Italian. 


Arabick • • • • 

•28 

Spanish • • • • 

• •27 

Persian .... 

•32 

German. 

• •26 

Turkish • • • • 

•33 

Sclavonick •• 

••27 

Sanscrit «• • 

• 50 

Russian. 


Chinese .... 

214 

Latin. 

• •22 




In the west, letters were invented 
by Thaut, a Phoenician, son of Mis- 
raim, and also called Hermes and 
Mercury. But, it is believed, that 
he only modified the older Sanscrit 
Alphabet, which was brought from 
the east by the commercial Phoeni¬ 
cians. The Sanscrit contains 16 
vowels and 34 consonants, and is 
the parent of most of the Oriental 
alphabets, even of the Greek. 

T. Sheridan reckoned 28 simple 
sounds, and proposed a new alpha¬ 
bet of 9 vowels and 19 consonants. 

An alphabet of 13 letters has been 
proposed,—the five vowels and the 
consonants b, g, d, 1, m, n, r, s. 

During six or seven centuries the 
Latin tongue prevailed in all publick 
proceedings, from the Tweed to the 
Euphrates, and from the Danube to 


and the language of 
the rapacious Roman conquerors 
has been more or less retained by 
servile classes even to this day. 

Adelung, the celebrated German 
philologer, was born in 1734, and 
died at Dresden in 1806. His Ger¬ 
man Dictionary is the standard of 
the language. In his general history 
of languages, he gave specimens of 
the Lords Prayer in 500 languages 
and dialects. 

The oldest authentick date in nu¬ 
meral characters is 1375, written on 
the leaf of a book by Petrarch ; and 
they appear to have travelled into 
Europe, through Arabia, from India; 
but when invented is not known. 
The oldest treatise on this arithme- 
tick in Sanscrit, is called Lilawati, 
and written about 1185. At first, in 
Europe, it was written in the Ara¬ 
bian manner, from left to right, be¬ 
ginning with 0 and ending with 1. 

Smart calculated 20,410 noun sub¬ 
stantives in Johnson’s Dictionary, 
9053 adjectives, 7880 verbs, and 
2592 adverbs. Todd and Taylor 
have increased these full half, mak¬ 
ing about 60,000 words in the Eng- 
lisn language. 

Horne Tooke, in his fanciful theo¬ 
ry, endeavours to make it appear, 
that if is derived from the Saxon 
giffan, to give; but from bo tan, to 
boot; yet from getan , to get; though 
from thaffigan, to allow; unless from 
oule&san , to dismiss. 

There are two languages spoken 
in Germany, one called Low Dutch 
and the other High German. The 
former prevails in Westphalia, Prus¬ 
sia, Lower Saxony, and on the coast; 
the other is spoken on the Rhine and 
Danube. 

A Cherokee, named Sus-gue-jah, 
about 1820, invented an alphabet of 
the Cherokee language; and also 
Digits for numbers, to effect the pur¬ 
poses of “ the speaking leaf,” but 
without any knowledge of other cha¬ 
racters or digits. 

The English, in pronunciation, 
dwell on, or accent consonants; the 
Scotch on vowels; and the Irish 
have a rising and falling inflexion, 
or accent. 

The nine Muses are—Clio, or Glory • 


242 LITERAT URE, &c. 

Mount Atlas; 
















243 


LITERATURE, &c. 


Euterpe, pleasure; Thalia, flourish¬ 

ing ; Melpomene, attracting; Terp¬ 
sichore, rejoicing ; Erato, gentle ; 
Polyhymnia, variety ; Urania, celes¬ 
tial ; and Calliope, sweetness. These 
ideas serve painters, and help the 
measure of lame poets. 

Anciently odes were divided into 
Strophe, Antistrophe, and Epode. 
The Epopoeia is the subject. 

The figures of Rhetorick are similes, 
metaphors, allegories, and personifi¬ 
cations. Some forms of expression 
are also called figures, as irony, an¬ 
tithesis, climax, apostrophe, hyper¬ 
pole, &c. 

Heroick measure, in English poet¬ 
ry, is ten syllables. Iambick verse, 
is when unaccented syllables alter¬ 
nate with accented. In Anapestick 
verse, the accent falls on every third 
syllable. 

A dactyl is one long and two short 
syllables ; a trochee, is one long and 
one short; a spondee is two long 
syllables; and iambicks are like 
trochees. There are 28 feet, or me¬ 
tres, consisting of two, or three, or 
four short and long syllables. Hexa¬ 
meter verse is of six feet, the first 
four, dactyls or spondees, the fifth a 
dactyl, and the sixth must be a spon¬ 
dee. Pentameter is five feet. The 
two first dactyls, or spondees; the 
third a spondee; and the two last 
anapesta, or two short and one long 
syllable. 

A syllogism is a process of reason¬ 
ing from a general or major propo¬ 
sition by a minor one, ana affirming 
or negativing the assertion in the 
major as to the minor, in a conclu¬ 
sion or inference. Equivoques in the 
use of words, in the major or minor, 
lead to sophistical conclusions, and 
to the endless confusions of opinions. 

Syllogisms have four figures—1. 
When the middle term is the subject 
of the major proposition, and the pre¬ 
dicate of the minor. 2. When the 
middle term is the predicate of major 
and minor. 3. When the middle 
term is the subject of both. 4. When 
the middle term is the predicate of 
the major, and subject of the minor. 
Each figure, also, has its moods. 
Syllogisms are also conditional, dis¬ 
junctive, &c. &c. 

Every proposition consists of a 


subject and predicate, and of a con¬ 
necting word called the copula, either 
affirmative or negative. 

The predicate is that which is affirm¬ 
ed or denied in any proposition. 

The classes of Sophisms or false 
reasoning are— 

1. Ignorantio Elenchi , or a mis¬ 
take of the question. 

2. The Petitio PHncipii, taking 
for granted what is to be proved, or 
arguing in a circle. 

3. The non causa pro causa , making 
that a cause which does not exist at 
all, or in the case in question. 

4. Th efallacia accidentis, drawing 
general conclusions from accidental 
circumstances. 

5. A dicto secundum quid, ad dic¬ 
tum simplicitur, a general deduction 
from particular circumstances ; or a 
general truth applied to all circum¬ 
stances. Another sophism arises 
from the ambiguity, or double sense 
of words. 

A genus is a general resemblance, 
as, that of the horse, ass, mule, ze¬ 
bra, is one genus ; so oxen, buffaloes, 
bisons, &c. are another genus ; and, 
of these, the horse, the mule, ox, &c. 
are species. 

Every oration, or argumentative 
discourse, consists really or covertly 
of an exordium, questidn, narration, 
argument , refutation , conclusion, and 
peroration. 

Bards, among the Druids, were pro¬ 
fessional poets ; and, among all an¬ 
cient people, such employments were 
recognised, and connected with reli¬ 
gion, prophecy, and musick. Among 
the Jews this class were called Pro¬ 
phets, and their compositions called 
Prophecyings. The Greeks called 
them Ubates; the Romans, Vates ; 
and the Britons, Bards. Ossian 
speaks of a prince who kept 100 
bards. Chief-bards wore sky-blue 
garments; and, the most distinguish¬ 
ed, a silver chain. Even Alexander 
the Great was accompanied by a bard 
named Cherylus, who was to have a 
piece of gold for every good verse, 
and a blow for every bad one. 

The first Greek writers were Ho¬ 
mer and Hesiod, 1000 B. C.; and 
Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, in 700; 
and Alcaeus, Sappho, and Anacreon, 
in 600. The first Latin writers were 





244 


LITERATURE, &c. 


Plautus, Ennius, and Terenlius, in 
200 B. C. The first British, Gildas, 
Nennius, and Bede, in 500 and 600. 
The first German, Eginhard, Walla- 
frid and Rabanus, in 800. The first 
French, Fort, Gregory, and Maralfe, 
in 500. The first Spanish, Anian, 
Fulgentius, and Martin, in 500. The 
first Polish, Yaraslof and Nestor, in 
1000. The first Italian, Gratian, Fal- 
cand, and Camp anus, in 1100. 

The Poems of Homer were chiefly 
traditional and oral, till Pisistratus 
collected them in writing 4 or 500 
years after the age of the poet, just 
as Ossian was collected by Macpher- 
son. In the east, it is believed that 
there are not a dozen copies of the 
Shastah, Vedah, and Zenda Vesta. 
In 1400, there was scarcely a book 
in Rome but missals. 

The works of Homer are supposed 
to have done great injury to mankind, 
by inspiring the love of military glo¬ 
ry. Alexander, was said to sleep 
with them always on his pillow.— 
Darwin. 

The printing-press has been unfa¬ 
vourable to the perfection of modern 
books. An author prints a large edi¬ 
tion, and often has no opportunity of 
correcting; but every copy was an 
edition to an ancient author, and he 
had as many opportunities of revising 
as there were copies made. This ex¬ 
plains the precision of the classick 
authors, which would be increased 
by the taste of learned copyists in 
after ages. 

The utility of printing, as far as 
regards the progress of truth, is coun¬ 
teracted by the great expense of set¬ 
ting the types ; for, as all books sell 
best which flatter prevailing opinions 
and support vested interests, and as 
they are printed chiefly at the risk 
of traders, who print for sale and 
profit, so few (very few) printed books 
contain the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth. 

Before the art of printing, books 
were of incredible price. From the 
6th to the 13th century many bishops 
could not read, and kings were scarce¬ 
ly able to sign their names; and 
hence the use of seals and sealing. 
These were the ages in which super¬ 
stition, witchcraft, and priestcraft ob¬ 
tained so universal an ascendency. 
From 500 to 1200 all learning was in 
the hands of the Arabs Saracens, 


and Chinese. Copying was, in an¬ 

cient Greece and Rome, a productive 
employment; but it afterwards fell 
into the hands of the monks, who 
copied chiefly theology. A good copy 
of the Bible, on vellum, employed 
two years; and the works of either of 
the Fathers still more time. Jerome 
states, that he had ruined himself in 
buying a copy of the Works of Ori- 
gen. Of course, copiers altered and 
vitiated, corrected the language, in¬ 
terpolated, &c. according to their 
honesty, taste, faith, or party; and 
hence the endless controversies 
among criticks and theologians about 
words, phrases, and paragraphs. It 
thus appeared, that, at the Council 
of Nice, in 325, there were 200 varied 
versions of the adopted Evangelist//, 
and 54 several Gospels preserved n 
various Christian communities, but 
so scarce that no Roman historian 
or writer appears ever to have seen 
them. 

Books were originally boards, or 
the inner bark of trees, the word be¬ 
ing derived from Bench, a Beech- 
Tree. The Horn-Book, now used in 
nurseries, is a primitive book. Bark is 
still used by some nations; skins are 
also used, for which parchment was 
substituted. Papyrus, an Egyptian 
plant, was adopted in that country, 
and an article of commerce; thin 
plates of brass were also used for 
church service. The papyrus and 
parchment books were commonly 
rolled on a round stick, with a ball 
at each end, and the composition be¬ 
gan at the centre, the outer fold bein^ 
its termination; these were called 
volumes. The outsides were in¬ 
scribed just as we now letter books. 
The MSS. in Herculaneum, consist 
of papyrus, rolled and charred, and 
matted together by the fire, and are 
about nine inches long, and one, two, 
or three inches in diameter, each be¬ 
ing a volume or separate treatise. 
Of course, as books were scarce, and 
the art of reading uncommon, they 
were very dear. The bequest of one 
to a religious house entitled the do¬ 
nor to masses for his soul, and they 
were commonly chained to their sta¬ 
tion ; while, in some ancient libraries, 
the books are chained to this day. 
As specimens of the prices of books, 
the Roman de la Rose was sold for 
above 30 1 .; and a Homily was ex¬ 
changed for 200 sheep and five quai- 





ters of wheat; and they usually 

fetched double or treble their weight 
in gold. When the passion for read- 
ingincreased, thebusinessof copying 
became considerable, and copyists 
enjoyed great reputation, according 
to their learning and accuracy. 
Hence they took it on themselves to 
purge and improve authors ; and to 
this cause may be ascribed the pre¬ 
cision and mechanical perfection of 
the classick authors, for the copyists 
plumed themselves on not transcrib¬ 
ing imperfections. This advanta 
was, however, counteracted by tEe 
principles which governed them; and 
hence the first printers were also cri- 
ticks, like the copyists. 

The modern names of sizes of 
books are derived from the folding 
of pa.per; when the sheet is not fold¬ 
ed it is called a folio, and this size was 
very fashionable through the 16th 
and 17th centuries. The folio sheet 
doubled, becomes a quarto, and this 
has been thought the most conven¬ 
ient form; another double consti¬ 
tutes the octavo, of eight leaves, or 
16 pages; another double, the square 
16mo. The sheet folded into twelve 
leaves, is called a duodecimo; into 
18, an octodecimo, or 18mo.; and 
then doubled again, becomes a 24mo. 
or 36mo. 

The first printed books were trifling 
Hymns and Psalters, with images of 
saints, and, being printed only on one 
side, the leaves were pasted back to 
back. One of the first was the Bib- 
lia Pauperum, of 40 leaves, which, 
pasted together, made 20. An entire 
Psalter was printed, in 1457, by 
Faust and Schoiffer; and a Bible, in 
637 leaves, in moveable types, was 
printed at Mentz, between 1450 and 
1455; but the most important part of 
the invention (that of the moveable 
types) is uncertain, both as to name 
and date. The first characters were 
Golhick; and Roman type was first 
used in 1467. 

Some writers give the invention of 
printing to Guttenberg, of Mayence; 
while others ascribe it to Faust, (of¬ 
ten called Dr. Faustus), of the same 
city; and others to Lawrence Ros¬ 
ter, of Haerlem. The copyists made 
so great a clamour, that the parlia¬ 
ment of Paris at first, to oblige them, 
caused all printed books to be seized. 

U2 


LITERATURE, &C. 


245 


Printing by blocks was an exten¬ 

sion of the art of seal engraving 
which had been carried to great per¬ 
fection in broad seals. The first 
printed sheets were worked only on 
one side of the paper, and the impres¬ 
sions produced by a plane and mal¬ 
let. The ordinary printing-press was 
first made by Bleau, at Amsterdam; 
the first types were cast in England, 
by Caslon, in 1720. The printing- 
machine was first suggested by 
Nicholson, in 1790; and stereotype 
printing was used in Holland during 
the last century. The rollers for 
inking the types were the suggestion 
also of Nicholson. Stereotype print¬ 
ing was introduced into London, by 
Wilson, in 1804. The last adopted 
improvements have been the Stan¬ 
hope press, and the Columbian press. 

Caxton was the first English 
printer, and his printing-office was 
in the Chapter-house of Westminster 
Abbey. He learnt the art in Ger¬ 
many, and was liberally patronized 
in England. The first book printed 
by Caxton was in 1471, and bore for 
its title, “ Willy am Caxton’s Recu- 
yel of the Historyes of Troy , by Ra¬ 
oul le Feure.” While the Biblioma¬ 
nia prevailed, a copy was knocked 
down, at auction, for 1060/. 18s. 

Foreign printers call types by dif¬ 
ferent names from those m England, 
thus our Pica is their Cicero. 

A sheet of type is about 120 lbs., 
or 60 lbs. to a form. The propor¬ 
tions in founts, as of 100,000 letters 
in English, would be 5000 a; 3000 
c; 11,000 e; 6000 i; 2000 m; and of 
k, q, x, and z, not above 30. 

Antimony is a metal with a spe- 
cifick gravity of 6.702, which alloyed 
with lead, makes types. 

England is the only country in 
which books are advertised, and this 
expense adds 30 per cent, to their 
price. In France, two copies are 
sent to about 20 journals, and their 
notice is the sole advertisement, be¬ 
sides the publick voice. In England 
the publick voice is surrendered to 
advertisements and puffs in every 
form, aided by mock criticisms. 

Trade in books has multiplied 
them in modern times. There are 
now printed, annually, about 1000 
books and pamphlets in the United 
Kingdom, besides 120 periodicals 






LITERATURE, NEWSPAPERS, &c. 


246_ 

twelve times a year; 20 others, 52 
times; 12 quarterly, and 300 several 
newspapers. In France, the new 
books and pamphlets are about 1500 
per annum. 

Books and paper were formerly 
sold only at stalls, and the dealers 
therefore were called Stationers. 

The largest impressions of any 
single book were those of Moore’s 
Almanack, a proof of the prevalence 
of superstition. For many years, 
during the late wars, when political 
excitement was excessive, the Sta¬ 
tioners’ Company sold from 420 to 
480 thousand copies per annum of 
Moore’s Astrological Prophesying 
Almanack. About 50 years since, 
the Company resolved no longer to 
administer to this gross credulity, 
and, for two or three years, omitted 
the predictions, when the sale fell 
off one half; while a prognosticator, 
one Wright, of Eaton, near Wool- 
strope, published another, and sold 
50 or 60,000. To save their property, 
the Company engaged one Andrews, 
of Royston, also a native of Wool- 
strope, to predict for them, and their 
sale rose again as above. The Com¬ 
pany have three or four prophesying 
almanacks, and three or four of ra¬ 
tional and scientifickcharacter; but 
the sale of the former is, to that of 
the latter, as twenty to one. 

The editions of books run by two 
hundred and fifties, every 250 being 
the mode of charge by printers. 
Few books pay for setting the types 
at less than 500, which, therefore, is 
the common edition of ordinary 
books. Others run 760, 1000, or 
1500. School-books and others, in 
small type, demand 2 or 3000. And, 
of many modern school-books, under 
the names of Blair, Goldsmith, Bar- 
row, &c. 10 or 15,000 have been 
printed per annum for a series of 
years. Of Paine’s Rights of Man, 
150,000 were sold within twelve 
months; and 30,000 of Burke’s Re¬ 
ply. In France, editions are larger 
than in England, owing to the de¬ 
mand in foreign countries. Three- 
fourths of the books printed do not 
pay their expenses; and not above 
one in ten realizes a profit. 

There are about 4500 booksellers, 
and venders of books, in the United 
Kingdom. 


The fame of most writers is very 
ephemeral, chiefly owing to their 
choice of subjects of the day, or the 
age or nation. English literature 
does not preserve above eight or ten 
authors before the age of Shak- 
speare; not above 20 from Shak- 
speare to Addison, and scarcely 50 
from the age of Addison to the year 
1800. Since the days of Elizabeth 
one or two books, or pamphlets, per 
day have been printed; but the sub¬ 
jects were obsolete theology, foi- 
gotten politicks, or superseded phi¬ 
losophy, and the majority in bad 
method or bad taste. It has been 
the same in France, Germany, Italy, 
and Holland; and doubtless, was 
the same among the ancients, though 
we so often lament the loss of an¬ 
cient works. 

The decline of literature, in Eng¬ 
land has been accelerated, or caused 
by a passion for novel reading, ’which 
deprives all other studies of their re¬ 
ward. It resembles the Roman lite¬ 
rature in the decline of the empire; 
and, for some years past, few books 
but novels have paid their expenses. 
A good novel yields its author 1000/. 
or 1500/.; and Dr. Johnson’s high 
price for his Dictionary, was but 
1575/. A novel, written in two 
months, will yield its author 400/. or 
500/. as a current speculation; and 
England has, therefore, become a 
nation of superficial novel writers 
and readers. 

The Constitutionel French paper 
sells between 14 and 15,000 per day. 
The Gazette de France above 9000 ; 
and the Journal des Debats nearly 
9000. The other papers, in October, 
1830, were below 5000; and the Mo- 
nit cur not 1500. Owing to the stamp, 
and the consequent nigh price, no 
daily London paper sells above 9000; 
and the chief part not above 1500. 
Some of the Sunday papers sell from 
10 to 15,000. 

Stamps used for London papers in 


1829. 

Times and Mail . . 3,275,311 

Herald & English Chron. 2,000,475 

Chronicle, and four others 2,333,450 
Morning Post . . 598,500 

Courier . . . 995,200 

Globe .... 864,000 

Sun ... 625,000 

Star .... 593,000 

John Bull . . . 337,500 








LITERATURE, PERIODICALS, &c. 


247 


Bell’s Messenger 
Ditto Despatch . 
Literary Gazette only 
Cobbett 
Atlas . 

Age . 

Sunday Times, &c. 
News , 


566,000 

780,552 

70,430 

176,500 

246,200 

256,000 

407,003 

253,000 


In 1831, the Herald, Star, Age, 
and Atlas have considerably increas¬ 
ed in sale, and may now be taken at 
25 or 30 per cent, higher. The Lite¬ 
rary Gazette, by these returns, has 
the lowest sale of the whole, and ap¬ 
pears to be eleven times less than 
the Despatch. 

The Age and Numbers of the Neits- 

papers of London, on February 1, 

Morning Herald - -65 years* -20,702 
Morning Chronicle 61 ditto —19,167 

Times-.46 ditto •• 14,501 

Star.43£ do. - • 13,697 

Morning Advertiser 39£ do. * • 12,409 

Courier.39 ditto • *12,326 

Sun.38 ditto -11,978 

Globe.* 28 ditto 8,821 

British Traveller •• 19 ditto •* 5,974 

The Dublin papers consumed, in 
1830,2,262,513 stamps. The highest, 
daily, were the Evening Mail, 439,- 
000; Saunders’ News Letter, 434,- 
500; The Evening Post, (three per 
week), 293,350; the Evening Packet, 
198,172; the Morning Register, daily, 
196,300; the Weekly Register, 154,- 
860. 

The newspapers in the United 
Kingdom are about 340 per week, 
and their average sale 120,000 per 
day, consuming 87,600 reams ; and 
the 150 periodicals consume about 
30,000 reams. The stamp-duty on 
these papers, in 1829 was 509,546Z.; 
and the duty on the paper only was 
above 30,000Z. In France, in 1828, 
the sale was 144,000,000 or 288,000 
reams. The reams of paper, stamp¬ 
ed for the periodical press, in 1820, 
was 50,717 reams. North America, 
m the year 1720, possessed no more 
than seven newspapers; but, in 1820, 
the United States had 359; and, 10 
years subsequently, the number nad 
increased to 740. 

Regiomontanus made the first Al¬ 
manack in 1474, 


The English Periodicals have a 
large circulation, nearly as under , 
in 1831 : 


Evangelical 
Armenian . 
Blackwood’s 
Frazer’s 
New Monthly 
Monthly . 
Gentleman’s 
Ladies’ 
Englishman’s 
Metropolitan 
Quarterly Review 
Edinburgh 
Westminster 
Loudon’s 
Medical 
Philosophical 
Monthly Review 
Brande’s Journal 
Brewster’s Journal 
La Belle AssemblSe 
Christian Observer 


9000 

13000 

5000 

3000 

2000 

750 

2000 

1800 

1500 

1800 

8000 

3500 

2500 

2100 

500 

500 

500 

600 

750 

1000 

4000 


There were, in 1830, printed in 
London, daily or weekly, 54 distinct 
newspapers; and, in'England and 
Wales 154 others. The wnole num¬ 
ber of papers which they sell in a 
year, is 25 millions. The 208 in 
England, and 36 in Scotland, make 
346 publications per week; and, in a 
year, 17,200 several separate publi¬ 
cations, which gives an average of 
1400; but about one-tenth publish 
treble, this number; one-tenth, dou¬ 
ble this number ; two-tenths, a fifth 
this number; another two-tenths, 
about 1000; so the other four-tenths 
sell from 750 to 500, or average 625. 
Clement, proprietor of the Morning 
Chronicle, Englishman, Observer, 
and Life in London, sold 2f millions 
of those papers only per annum, and 
paid, in stamps and duties, not less 
than 1000Z. per week. 

In 1829, the clerks of the roads 
transmitted, from London, 1,207,794 
newspapers; and 316 daily papers 
abroad; while the various venders 
transmitted 10,654,912. 

The 25 millions of newspapers, 
sold annually in England, consume 
100,000 reams of paper; and these 
346 several publications give con¬ 
stant employment to ten persons on 
each, as editors, printers, publishers, 
&c. &c. In London, about two- 
thirds of the matter in each is print¬ 
ed from MS.; in the country, about 















248 


LITERATURE, PERIODICALS, &c. 


two thirds is transferred from the 
London and other papers. 

The United Kingdom , one of the 
largest of our Sunday papers, so 
called, is worthy of its object in its 
own unequalled dimensions. Every 
page contains seven columns, and is 
24£ inches long by 19J wide, con¬ 
taining 480 square inches per page. 
The four pages contain therefore, 
1,920 square inches, and every square 
inch, on the average, 32 words ! 
Hence this surprising sheet contains 
above 60,000 words, sold for Id., or 
2150 words for every farthing. 

The word Gazette is derived from 
the nameof the Venetian coin, which 
was the price of the first newspaper. 

The London Gazette was com¬ 
menced, at Oxford, on November 7, 
1665; the Court then residing there, 
on account of the plague. 

The first regular critical journal 
was the Journal de Scavans, began 
in 1665, and continued for nearly a 
century. The first, in England, was 
called the Waies of Literature, which 
commenced in 1714, and was discon¬ 
tinued in 1722; and the present state 
of the Republiek of Letters began 
in 1719. 

Various Periodical Miscellanies 
were commenced in the reign of 
Queen Anne, and continued for va¬ 
rious periods. Cave took up an old 
title in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 
in 1731; and, in 1732, the London 
Magazine was begun. 

The total number of new publica¬ 
tions, in the year 1812, in London, 
was 693; and their cost, in boards, 
230Z. They have since increased to 
800, at a cost of 400Z., for one copy of 
each. 


Reviews ofVBooks, under the false 
pretence and colour of criticism, are 
usually written by the friends or ene¬ 
mies of authors, or of the publishers 
of the works, and are trading frauds, 
which now delude only the ignorant. 
No such opinions can have any au¬ 
thority without the known name of 
a responsible critick. Nevertheless a 
malignant spirit in readers who of¬ 
ten delight in slander, occasions the 
most vituperate anonymous criti¬ 
cisms to be most read and patronised. 


The following French Periodica• 

Publications were sent daily by 
the post , in February , 1831. 

Subs. 

2224 
15400 
8882 
10019 
3930 
6596 
4810 
2919 
1328 
1308 
1303 
1279 
1688 
1270 
1154 
668 
564 
552 
223 
750 


DAILY. 

Moniteur . 

Constitutionnel . 

Debats 

Gazette de France 
Courier Fran$ais 
Le Temps . 

Quotidienne 
Le National 
Le Messager 
Galignani’s Messenger 
Commerce . 

Gazette des Tribunaux 
L’Avenir 
Le Globe . 

L’Ech Fran^ais . 

Figaro 
La Tribune 
La Revolution . 

Journal de Paris 
Courier de l’Europe . 

FEBIODICAL. 

Courier des Electeurs . . 2520 

Journal de l’Enregistrement 1060 
Journal des Maires . . 6374 

Le Cabinet de Lecture . 402 

Journal des Dames . . 1076 

Petit-Courier des Dames . 1771 

LeVoleur .... 1111 

Le Correspond ant . . 1300 

L’Echo des Halles . . 1030 

Gazette des Tribunaux . 301 

L’Ami de la Religion . . 780 

La Feuille Fran^aise . . 340 

La Caricature . . . 235 

Gazette Medicale . . 422 

Journal de la Librairie . 265 

Journal des Salons . . 280 

La Mode .... 586 

Revue de Paris . . . 360 

Revue Britannique . . 752 

Idem Encyclopedique . 287 

Idem Medicale . . . 287 

( pL’Ami de la Jeunesse . 360 

* Archives du Christianisme . 420 

Idem de la Medecine . . 410 

Socigte d’ Encouragement. 220 

The numbers circulated in Paris 
about a third more . 


There are, by other accounts, in 
Paris, 152 journals, literary and reli- 
gious; and 17 political. One hun¬ 
dred and fifty-one are liberal, having 
197,000 subscribers; and, the other 
18 have 21,000. There are 75 pro¬ 
vincial journals, with 99.000 sub- 








LITERARY INSTITUTIONS, &c. 249 


srcribers. In all, 244; with 317,000 
subscribers. 

In 1829, the British and Foreign 
Bible Society had circulated, in 25 
years, 11 millions of copies of the 
Jewish Scriptures,in 150 languages; 
and, in 1828, 365,424. Hence, as 
each book contains 30 sheets, this 
would make 330 millions; and they 
have therefore expended 660,000 
reams of demy paper, duty free, at 
20s.; and also as much more in 
printing and editing, or above a 
million sterling, in paper and print¬ 
ing, besides Is. 6 d. for binding, mak¬ 
ing another 825,0001 

The issue by the London Society, 
during the year 1830, had been 325,- 
453 Bibles and Testaments at home, 
and 108,829 on the continent; mak¬ 
ing, altogether, a total of 434,422 
copies. The income had been 84,- 
982Z. 5s. 11 d.; and the expenditure 
amounted to 81,6101 13s. §cL 

The early Chinese literature suffer¬ 
ed a similar misfortune to that of the 
west in the destruction of the Alexan¬ 
drian Library; for their Emperour, 
Chee-whang-tee, ordered all writings 
to be destroyed, that every thing 
might begin anew as from his reign; 
ana their books and records were af¬ 
terwards recovered by succeeding 
emperours with great difficulty. So 
the Musselmen conquerors of Hin- 
dostan destroyed the chief part of 
the most ancient writings. 

In Thibet, there is a Cyclopedia, 
in 44 volumes; and lithography has 
been practised there from time im¬ 
memorial 

At Stevens’s sale, the first edition 
of the Merry Wives of Windsor sold 
for 28 1 

The Bible, used by Charles I., at 
his execution, is preserved in the 
Royal Library, at Berlin. 

It has been stated, that the six 
largest libraries in Europe contain 
the following number of volumes 
and MSS.:— 

Volumes. MSS. 

Royal Library of 

Paris.450,000 77,000 

Bodleian, Oxford •••420,000 30,000 
Munich University- • 400,000 9,000 

Vatican, at Rome- • • 100,000 40.000 


Gottingen Univer¬ 
sity.300,000 5,000 

British Museum ••••500,000 120,000 

Besides the Museum, there are 
the undermentioned in England :— 
Cambridge University; Advocates’, 
Edinburgh; Sion College; and Dub¬ 
lin University ; and, in London, the 
Library of the Royal Institution, the 
London Institution, and five or six 
others. 

The Advocates’ Library, at Edin¬ 
burgh, contains 100,000 volumes, 
besides ancient MSS., and a cabinet 
of scarce and valuable medals. 

Italy had, in the 15th century, so 
many associations, like our societies, 
called Academies, that there were 
550 for general or particular pursuits. 
The French imitated the Italians in 
the 16th and 17th centuries; and, in 
the 17th and 18th, the English imi¬ 
tated both, in the Royal and other 
Societies; and of late they have been 
so extended, as, perhaps, to equal 
the Italian societies in number. They 
spread knowledge, but subdue ori¬ 
ginal thinking by the deference to 
existing authorities. In Italy, there¬ 
fore, no new discoveries are trace¬ 
able to them ; and, in England, the 
distinction in numerous ones con¬ 
sists in merely knowing the current 
knowledge repeated in books. 
Academia della Crusca, was 


founded in • 1582 

--del Cimento • 1610 

-Bononiensis • 1690 

L’Academie Fran<joise • 1635 


---de Peinture et de 

Sculpture - 1643 

-des Inscriptions et 

Medailles • 1663 

-R. des Sciences 

(Institute) • 1666 

R. Aeademy of Sciences at 


Berlin - • • 1700 

Royal Society of London * 1665 

R. Spanish Academy • 1714 

R. Academy of Sciences at 

Lisbon • • • 1779 

Petersburgh ♦ • 1725 

Stockholm • • 1741 

Copenhagen • • 1742 

The American Academy, Bos¬ 
ton ... 1779 

The Royal Irish Academy 1782 

The Academy of Ancient Musick 1710 
The Royal Academy of Arts 1768 

Royal Military Academy, Wool¬ 
wich • • • 1741 














250 


LITERARY INSTITUTIONS, &c. 


The French Academy was created 
by Louis XIII., in 1635. Its original 
pursuits were Eloquence and Poetry. 
In 1648, it was extended to the Fine 
Arts; and, in 1666, by Colbert, to the 
Arts and Sciences. 

The following is a list of the prin¬ 
cipal Literary Societies in the United 
Kingdom, with the fee on admission, 
and the initial letters distinguishing 
the members:— 

Royal Society, 50/., F.R.S. 

Royal Society of Edinburgh, 25/. 
4s., F.R.S.E. 

Royal Academy of Dublin, 26/. 5s., 
MR.I.A. 

Royal Society, Literary, 36/. 15s., 
F.R.L. 

Antiquarian Soc., 50/. 8s., F.A.S. 

Linnaean Society, 36/., F.L.S. 

Geological Soc., 34/. 13s., F.G.S. 

Astronomical Soc., 25/. 4s., M.A.S. 

Zoological Society, 26/. 5s., F.Z.S. 

Royal Institution, 50/., M.R.S. 

Royal Asiatick Society, 31/. 10s., 
F.R.A.S. 

Horticultural Soc., 48/. 6s., F.H.S. 

Medico Botanical, 21/., F.M.B.S. 

In 1827, only 109of the 1150 F.R.S. 
had contributed to the Transactions: 
and, of these, 11 only had titles. 

The Royal Society of London is 
governed by a president and 18 coun¬ 
cil, with about 1000 members. The 
Royal Society of Edinburgh has a 
president, five vice presidents, and 
literary and physical councils. 

The Antiquarian Society was esta¬ 
blished in 1751; and there is another 
in Scotland, 1780. 

The Royal College of Physicians, 
founded in 1523, has a president, 96 
fellows, about 18 candidates, and 
about 320 licentiates. The Royal 
College, at Dublin, 33 fellows, and 
60 licentiates. That of Edinburgh 
(1681), about 100 fellows, of whom a 
third are resident. 

The College of Surgeons is govern¬ 
ed by a president, 20 vice-presidents, 
7 curators, and 4 professors, with 
officers. 

The British Museum is governed 
by 23 official trustees, 9 of the fami¬ 
lies of donors, and 14 elected. There 
is a principal librarian, and 14 keep¬ 
ers and assistants. The number of 
visiters per annum is about 50,000. 

The Literary Fund was established 


in 1790, for the eleemosynary relief 

of destitute authors. 

The Asiatick Royal Society was 
incorporated in 1824, for literary and 
scientifick purposes. 

The Institution for Improving and 
Exploring Africa was formed in 1807; 
and there is also an African and 
Asiatick Society, with religious ob¬ 
jects. 

There is an Anti-Slavery Society, 
of which the Duke of Gloucester is 
Patron. 

The Horticultural Society of Lon¬ 
don was founded in 1808, and has 
been eminently useful in naturalizing 
foreign plants and improving garden¬ 
ing. There is another at Edinburgh, 
and others in nearly every county. 

The total number of visiters to the 
Horticultural Gardens, in 1830, was 
224,745. But this is exceeded by the 
visiters to the Zoological Gardens, 
in the Regent’s-park, often 1500 per 
day. 

The G arden of Fromont, six leagues 
from Paris, contains 130 acres, and 
: more than 6000 species and varieties 
of vegetables, many of them still new 
in France. Some of the green-houses 
are 2,000 feet in length, with glazed 
roofs, possessing all varieties of ex¬ 
posure. 

The Athenaeum, in Waterloo-place, 
is a club of distinguished amateurs 
of literature. 

The term Blue Stocking , applied 
to literary ladies, was conferred on a 
society which was called the Blue 
Stocking Club, in which females 
were admitted; and so called owing 
to a Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, one 
of its acting members, always wear¬ 
ing blue stockings. 

In general, literary and philoso¬ 
phical societies are close corpora¬ 
tions, very unfavourable to originality 
and the advance of knowledge be¬ 
yond a prescribed beaten track. They 
are usually governed by ancient au¬ 
thorities, ana by the prejudices of the 
education of the senior or leading 
members ; and, hence, having a cer¬ 
tain weight with the vulgar, they im¬ 
pede the march of discovery. They 
help to spread what was known 
when they were founded; but they 
look with stern jealousy on all inno¬ 
vations, and guard, with vigilance* 




LITERARY INSTITUTIONS, &c. 


the orthodox faith recognised, conti¬ 

nued, and cherished by their society. 
Thus they give countenance to errour, 
and serve as engines to keep know¬ 
ledge within the limits prescribed by 
civil and ecclesiastical power. 

Incomes of several Religious So¬ 
cieties of England:— 

British and Foreign Bible 

Society, 84,982*. 

Christian Knowledge So¬ 
ciety, 65,929 

Gospel Propagation Society, 34,693 
Church Missionary Society, 47,328 
London Missionary Society, 48,226 
Wesleyan Missionary So¬ 


ciety, 46,302 

Baptist Missionary Society, 17,185 
London Jews’ Conversion 
Society, 12,145 

Hibernian (London) Society, 9,228 
National School Society, 2,183 
Religious Tract Society, 24,973 
Slave Conversion Society, 4,375 
Naval and Military Bible So¬ 
ciety, 3,396 


400,950*. 

There are three methods of acquir¬ 
ing knowledge—first, by committing 
to memory in the manner of tasks, 
which usually are forgotten a3 soon 
as said by rote; second, reading 
books, which makes but a fleeting 
impression, and leaves only general 
ideas; and, third, answering, by ori¬ 
ginal exercise, questions upon books, 
and on the facts and principles con¬ 
tained in them, by which the student 
is compelled to think for himself, and 
to evince his acquaintance with the 
subject. This is called the Interro¬ 
gative system, and it has been ap¬ 
plied to every subject of study with 
unequivocal success. The interro¬ 
gative system, by questions, without 
answers, is however to be carefully 
distinguished from the vulgar me¬ 
thod of writing books in questions 
with answers, by which no advan¬ 
tage is gained. 

The system of infant schools em¬ 
braces children just emerged from 
the nursery, and instruction is effect¬ 
ed by toys and sensible objects, and 
by the patience and address of the 
tutoress. 

The system of Pestalozzi consists 
of oral questions, proceeding synthe¬ 
tically from simple to complicated 


251 

objects, and the answers are given 
orally. It is similar to the interro¬ 
gative system, but does not possess 
the practical convenience and intel¬ 
lectual advantages wiiich attend the 
writing of the answers, which act is 
a simultaneous exercise in spelling, 
grammar, and composition. 

The Hamiltonian system, for teach¬ 
ing language, is similar to that deve¬ 
loped in the little books bearing the 
name of the Abbe Bossut; both con¬ 
sider the words of a language as the 
primary objects to be learnt, and 
then the phrases or idiomatick con¬ 
struction. 

The system of Bell and Lancaster 
is an appeal to the eye and memory, 
in small classes directed by moni¬ 
tors, who are the more forward 
children, and who perfect themselves 
while teaching the others, so that 
one master may thus superintend 
the economy and exercises of several 
hundred pupils ; and it is therefore a 
cheap method of teaching the mass 
of the juvenile population the first 
elements of knowledge. 

The interrogative system of in¬ 
struction, invented and introduced by 
the editor of this work between 1798 
and 1827, consists of text-books and 
questions on the text-books, without 
answers , which are to be famished 
in writing by the pupils; and keys 
are printed to the questions for the 
ease of tutors. 

The system of teaching languages 
by words, phrases, ana grammar 
in consecutive succession, as in the 
nursery, was first published, in 1803, 
in elementary works, under the as¬ 
sumed name of the Abbe Bossut. In 
1815, it was announced as a disco¬ 
very by Hamilton. 

The University of Oxford is go¬ 
verned by a chancellor,high-steward, 
vice-chancellor, and 4 pro-vice-chan¬ 
cellors. There are 19 colleges and 5 
halls, the oldest University having 
been founded in 1172; and, the last, 
Worcester, in 1714. The professors 
are 27; of whom there are 2 in di¬ 
vinity, 2 in Arabick, and 1 in the equi¬ 
vocal science of political economy. 

CambridgeUniversity consists of a 
chancellor, high-steward, and deputy 
vice-chancellor, a commissary, pub- 
lick orator, librarian, 3 esquire bedels, 
24 professors 3 preachers and cura- 





252 


LITERARY INSTITUTIONS, &c. 


tors of the Botanick Garden and Fitz- 
william Museum. It consists of 13 
colleges and 4 halls. Peter-house 
was formed in 1257; and Downing 
in 1800. 

Thought St. Peter’s, the oldest col¬ 
lege at Cambridge, was founded in 
1280, this was a place of education 
as early as the Romans, but revived 
in the reign of Henry I. The system 
©f education still pursued, too much 
resembles that of the Popish and 
dark ages, and changes of system do 
not keep pace with improvements; 
so that in all such establishments 
students do not acquire the know¬ 
ledge of their own age, but only that 
of a previous age, or of the tutors’ 
tutors. 

There were, in 1828-9, on the books, 
at Oxford, 5163 members, of whom 
2717 were students; and, at Cam¬ 
bridge, 5145, and 3088 students. 

The Members of Convocation of 
Oxford, in Jan. 1831, were 2529 ; and 
the whole on the books, 5258; Christ¬ 
church, 951. 

The Temple, London, was founded 
in 1185; Lincoln's-inn, in 1310; and 
Gray’s-inn, in 1357. 

There are four Universities in Scot¬ 
land ; St. Andrew’s, of two colleges; 
Aberdeen, of two colleges; Glasgow 
and Edinburgh of one. 

St. Andrew’s University, founded 
in 1410, has two colleges, St. Salva¬ 
tor’s and St. Mary’s, for divinity 
only. Its students are 150. 

Nearly 3000 students per annum 
attend the University of Edinburgh, 
where education and knowledge are 
acquired in the highest degree of per¬ 
fection. 

The University of Dublin, or Tri¬ 
nity College, has produced some 
learned men. It consists of a pro¬ 
vost, 7 senior, and 18 junior fellows, 
and 70 foundation scholars. It has 
usually about 2500 students, and 
possesses a library 270 feet long, 
containing nearly 80,000 books. 

The Royal College of Maynooth 
has 9 professors; 1 of dogmatick 
theology, 1 of moral theology, 1 of 
sacred scripture, and 1 of Irish. 

Gresham College, sadly deterior¬ 
ated, has 7 professors of branches of 
ancient learning, who lecture in 


term-time. It is under the direction 

of 12 of the corporation of London. 

There are endowed Colleges at 
Dulwich, Eton, St. Bee’s, St. Da¬ 
vid’s, and Winchester; besides the 
Military, Naval, East India, and 
Sion; and Elizabeth, in Guernsey. 

Two new colleges, on the plan 
suggested by Defoe, have recently 
been established in London, one call¬ 
ed the London University, near Tot¬ 
tenham Court; and the other, King’s 
College, in one wing of Somerset- 
house. The first is more particu¬ 
larly supported by the Dissenters, 
and the second by the High Church; 
but they are experiments on the 
population of a metropolis, and are 
not yet fully matured. 

Universities, like societies, are fa¬ 
vourable only to the propagation of 
the knowledge of the previous age, or 
ages, and to the perpetuity of estab¬ 
lished opinions. In general, too, as 
the dead languages were the lan¬ 
guage of literature when the first 
universities were founded in the 13th 
century, so, by precedent and usage, 
they continue their studies in those 
languages at a time when all know¬ 
ledge out of their walls is in living 
languages. They preserve, too, the 
studies and cast of opinions which 
they enacted at the era of their foun¬ 
dation, and usually proscribe all im¬ 
provements and discoveries as dan¬ 
gerous innovations. 

The number of children receiving 
elementary education in England, in 
: 1818, was near 1,100,000; and the re¬ 
turns, in 1828, make it about 2,000,- 
000—1,500,000 betw-een 5 and 12. 
The other 500,000 are presumed to 
receive education at about 10,000 in¬ 
dependent schools, at 50 to each. 
But for education, the distressed cir¬ 
cumstances of the country, since 
1825, would have increased crime 
tenfold. 

The first Infant School was open¬ 
ed by Mr. R. Owen, at New Lanark, 
in 1816, as an experiment, to teach 
children morals and facts without 
theology. 

Besides parish and district schools, 
there are, in London, numerous large 
schools for popular and useful edu¬ 
cation. 

During 1830, 328 English National 
Schools nad been received into union 





PHILOSOPHY, &.c. 


with the National Society, making a 

total of 2,937 schools: and 6,643/. 
had been voted in aid of building 
school-rooms in 104 places. There 
cannot be less, in England and 
Wales, than 710,000 children receiv¬ 
ing instruction under the care of the 
clergy. 

Christ’s Hospital, London, boards, 
clothes, and educates 1200 children. 

The Foundation Schools of Har¬ 
row, Westminster, Merchant-Tai¬ 
lors, St. Paul’s, the Charter-house, 
Rugby, and some others have, de¬ 
servedly, great celebrity; but the 
systems of education are those of 
the age of Elizabeth. 

The Number of Children educated 
at the great Publick Schools is as 
under :— 


253 


Christ’s Hospital 
Eton 

Charter-house 
Winchester 
Westminster . 
Harrow . 


1200 

500 

400 

250 

250 

200 


The National Schools, in the 
spring of 1830, educated 275,000 chil¬ 
dren ; the Lancastrian, 53,000; and 
there were 5000 Sunday Schools, for 
700,000 children. 

In 1828, the University of Berlin 
had 1706 students. 

There are 400 students at the Uni¬ 
versity of Kiel. 


PHILOSOPHY. 

Philosophy has undergone four 
great changes1. A total subser¬ 
viency to priestcraft and superstition, 
by the Chaldeans and Egyptians. 
2. A commixture of reason and po¬ 
etry, by the Greeks. 3. A mechani¬ 
cal system, introduced by Coperni¬ 
cus and Galileo; and, 4, a system of 
poetical, verbal, and imaginary cau¬ 
sation, taught by Newton, Lavoisier, 
&c. The world, at present, are divi¬ 
ded between the two last; but rea¬ 
son demands the entire ascendency 
of the third. 

The religion and philosophy of the 
Hindoos are contained in a Book 
called Anbertkend; or, the Cistern 
of the Waters of Life; but they have 
nine schools of philosophy, ancient 
and modern. 

The first observers and recorders 
of nature were the Hindoos ; the se¬ 
cond, the Chinese; and the third, 
the Arabians and Chaldeans. But 
all reasoning was so mingled with 
priestcraft, that nature never was 
approached by common sense. Such 
has been the fate of philosophy al¬ 
ways, even to our own times. It 
must not differ from theology, and 
therefore it makes no publick ad¬ 
vances. The schools, of our days, 
are more ignorant of proximate 
causation, than able Greeks in the 
remote days of Thales. 


In the Russian Universities there 
are students:—Moscow, 891; Dor- 
pat, 612; Helsingfoers (late Abo), 
471; Charkoff, 318; Wilna, 303; St. 
Petersburgh, 311; and Kasan, 81. 
The ecclesiastical high schools at¬ 
tached to the Greek church, are 
those of Kieff, Moscow, and St. Pe¬ 
tersburgh, of which the first pos¬ 
sesses 1500, the second 630, and the 
last 830 scholars. The whole of the 
students throughout the Russian 
empire are therefore 5957 in number. 

The following is the number of de¬ 
grees granted by the Scottish Uni¬ 
versities in the last 31 years :— 

D.D. LL.D. A.M. M.D. 

Edinburgh.46 27 199 2,524 

Glasgow.87 72 760 654 

St. Andrews* •• *69 6 59 649 

Aberdeen.26 59 740 286 

Marischal.31 50 881 282 

V 


Pythagoras, says Mr. T. Taylor, 
taught that all things result from m at- 
ter and form, in harmony and sym¬ 
metry, strictly geometrical and arith¬ 
metical. He taught that the ele¬ 
ments of fire, air, earth, and water, 
were made up of atomick plane 
figures, indefinitely thick, of trian¬ 
gular forms, since, from an equila¬ 
teral triangle, and its division in the 
middle, he could form, by their com¬ 
bination, all the regular figures, and 
then these produced different effects, 
as the pyramid fire and the cube 
earth. Every reader will see in this 
the germs of the modern theory of 
Hauy, an approach to the definite 
proportions of modern chymistry, 
and the last theory of Wollaston; 
while the microscopick observations 
of Link and Daniel tend to support 
the outline of the theory 

The Pythagorians said, that num- 












bers, from 1 to 10, govern all things, 
as—1. bound, or the infinite; 2. the 
odd and even; 3. one or many; 4. 
right or left; 5. male or female; 6. 
rest or motion; 7. straight or curved; 
8. light and darkness; 9. good or 
evil; 10. square or oblong;—called 
the 10 co-ordinations. 

Pythagoras taught the solar sys¬ 
tem, such as was revived by Coper¬ 
nicus. 

Xenophanes asserted a first prin¬ 
ciple, finite and spherical. 

Thales and Hippon called the first 
principle water, for the hot lives by 
the moist, and dry things perish; 
while seeds are moist, and aliment 
juicy. Thales left no writings but 
nis Nautical Astrology; but he col¬ 
lected and edited the works of Ho¬ 
mer. 

Hi ppasus and Heraclitus taught 
that, there was one moveable and 
finite principle, but that it is to fire 
which all things owe their rarity and 
density; and Heraclitus taught ne¬ 
cessity. 

Anaximander, the disciple of 
Thales, alleged that the infinite was 
the principle and element of beings, 
distinct from the elements and mat¬ 
ter ; and he taught that generation 
was the separation of contraries, 
through an eternal motion. 

Anaximenes, that the infinite is 
air, which, divided, is fire; and, con¬ 
densed, wind; then a cloud; then 
water, earth, and minerals, from 
which other things are produced. 

Aristotle, the most elaborate of 
the Grecian philosophers, was a pu¬ 
pil of Plato. He was, by Philip, ap¬ 
pointed tutor of Alexander the Great; 
and, after his pupil went on the Per¬ 
sian wars, Aristotle taught philo¬ 
sophy, in the Lyceum of Athens, 
with great renown, for 13 years. But, 
on the death of Alexander, the priest¬ 
hood—the gods of whose interest he 
did not teach, but only the existence 
of one God,—raised charges against 
him, and fearing the fate of Socra¬ 
tes, he withdrew from Athens ; and, 
in 319 B. C. he died in his 63d year. 
He was the author of 400 treatises, 
which he left to Theophrastus, his 
successor, with an injunction not to 
publish them. At his death, they 
became the property of his heir; and 


afterwards fell into illiterate hands, 
at Smyrna, where they were put in 
a cellar, and remained 150 years, till 
they nearly perished. They were 
then removed to Athens, and, in 86, 
sent by Sylla to Rome. 

Diogenes Apoloniates ascribes all 
things to air, and he adopted an 
element between fire and air, appa¬ 
rently the gas or ether of the mo¬ 
derns. 

Parmenides adopted two princi¬ 
ples, fire and earth, or God ana mat¬ 
ter ; the one active, the other passive, 
a near approach to the doctrines of 
the moderns. He used to say, that, 
although the priests and the people 
had so many names for Goa, and 
assigned so many properties, nature 
and philosophy knew but one: hence 
his line. 

The one immoveable has every 
name. 

Since, therefore, it was not gene¬ 
rated, it is, and always was, and 
will be; and it is infinite, for it' has 
neither beginning nor end. 

A being unproduced, without de¬ 
cay, unshaken, single, whole with¬ 
out an end; nor once it was, nor 
will hereafter be, since it now is one 
simultaneous all. 

Thales and Anaximander directed, 
says Simplicius, their attention to 
the prolifick vital nature of water: 
Heraclitus, to fire; Anaximenes, to 
air; and Anaximander to motion: 
owing to their different views as in¬ 
telligible, sensible, or proximate, as¬ 
serting different things in words, but 
not such as are contrary, to those 
who are competent to judge. Aris¬ 
totle observes, that some assume 
prior, others posterior principles; and 
one appeals to reason ana another 
to sense, with little general differ¬ 
ence. 

Plato and Aristotle were rather 
commentators than inventors of 
new opinions, though they conferred 
greater perfection ; and Plato defined 
the intellectual God; while Aristotle 
states, that every thing which moves 
must have an immoveable mover, 
the first principle of motion, subsist¬ 
ing as a properly producing princi¬ 
ple, and as eternally motive. 

Empedocles admitted four ele¬ 
ments, the principle of whose action 
was friendship and strife, or the 


254 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 






PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


255 


’attraction and repulsion of the 
moderns. 

liy friendship’s aid, we sometimes with one 
All things collect; and some.iines strife detains 
Ail things apart, discordant borne along. 

And these he makes co-ordinate 
with the four elements. Again, we 
have further confirmation in these 
lines— 

And each with equal power is found endued, 

When strife pernicious is from each apart. 

And friendship equalized in length and breadth. 

Plato taught three principles, the 
cause or mover, matter and form; 
or two, the cause and matter. He 
was, in other respects, of the school 
of Pythagoras and Parmenides. 

Anaxagoras made corporeal prin¬ 
ciples to be infinite; and those of 
water, fire, gold, &c. were unbegot¬ 
ten and incorruptible, and parts of 
their own eternal kinds, governed 
by one cause of motion and genera¬ 
tion—intellect. 

Archilaus and Socrates made prin¬ 
ciples infinite, and ascribed genera¬ 
tion and corruption to mixture and 
separation. 


century B. C., taught the infinity of 
air, or ether; that its activity was 
the cause of all things; and that it 
was in reality God. From it pro¬ 
ceed fire, water, and earth, by rare¬ 
faction and condensation. 

Anaxagoras, an Athenian, who 
flourished in the fifth century before 
Christ, taught that wind was owing 
to rarefaction; that the rainbow was 
owing to reflection; that the moon 
is enlightened by the sun; that 
comets are wandering stars; that 
the fixed stars were beyond the sun, 
&c.; many of them regarded as 
modern discoveries. He was perse¬ 
cuted and banished by the priest¬ 
hood. 

Aristotle t aught the principle of vir¬ 
tual velocities.; and, also, mat time, 
space, and a vacuum were essential 
to motion, with the laws and varie¬ 
ties of which he was familiar. The 
energy of nature to fill up vacuities, 
he figuratively described as an ab¬ 
horrence, but did not assert that 
there are no vacuities. 


Leucippus asserted that atoms’ 
the elements of all things, were in¬ 
finite, and always moved; and that 
they were of various forms, thereby 
generating and characterizing differ¬ 
ent bodies in figure, order, and posi¬ 
tion. 


The Academical Philosophy is so 
called from Plato’s place of teach¬ 
ing, a grove of one Hecademus be¬ 
queathed for gymnastick exercises. 

Most of these opinions of the 
Greeks prevailed in the earliest 
books and schools of the Hindoos. 


Democritus and Metrodorus fol¬ 
lowed Leucippus; and added, that 
the full and the void are the first 
causes of things. 

Zeno, Leucippus, Democritus, Pro¬ 
tagoras, and Epicurus, were the in¬ 
ventors of the Atomick System, in 
which they ascribed the composition 
of all bodies to smaller, and smaller 
parts, in various forms, called Atoms, 
at present the principle ofehymistry. 

Anaximander, a Greek philoso¬ 
pher. who flourished in the sixth 
century B. C., taught that infinity 
of matter is the original cause of all 
phenomena, and that all things re¬ 
turn into it. He made the first globe, 
and invented the sun-dial. He ob¬ 
served the obliquity of the eeliptick, 
and taught that the sun was 28 
times larger than the earth. He 
thought stars animated by the divi¬ 
nity. 

Anaximenes, another Greek phi¬ 
losopher, who flourished in the sixth 


Edrissi, an Arabian geographer, in 
the 12th century, describes the earth 
as round, and gives its size as 11,000 
leagues, or about 27,000 miles; and 
states, that Hermes had made it 36,- 
000, which proves that the ancient 
Egyptians were familiar with the 
shape, and approximated the size. 
He imagined, that south of the 
equator was a region of fire; and be¬ 
yond the 64th degree of north lati¬ 
tude, was a region of ice and dark¬ 
ness ; the Atlantick hecalls the sea of 
darkness; and the Northern Ocean, 
the sea of pitchy darkness. He de¬ 
scribes England as a country of per¬ 
petual winter, and Scotland as an 
island. 

Copernicus, in 1543, laid the 
foundations of modern science, by 
applying geometry to illustrate as¬ 
tronomy and cosmography. Gali¬ 
leo extended his method in explain¬ 
ing the acceleration of falling bodies, 
and the motions of apendulum. Kep¬ 
ler, the pupil of Tycho Brahe, eng- 





256 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


gested some new laws. Fermat, 
Gassendi, and Huygens, perfected 
and extended the views of their pre¬ 
decessors. Descartes suggested 
causes, and Hooke invented the 
theory of universal gravitation. 
Newton gave geometrical forms to 
the ideas of Kepler and Hooke, but 
adduced, as a proof, that the moon 
falls 16 feet per minute in her orbit, 
whereas she falls nearly 130,000 ; 
and he applied the law of superficial 
radiation to the celestial forces. 
Euler, Bernouilli, and Clairaut, illus¬ 
trated the theory of comets; La¬ 
grange and Lalande other curious 
points; and La Place systematized 
the whole by refined mathematicks, 
in his Mechanique Celeste. 

The follies of philosophy have 
been the squaring the circle, the per- 

f ietual motion, the inextinguishable 
amp, attraction and repulsion, the 
philosopher’s stone, the universal 
solvent, the elixir of life, the influence 
of the stars, and the raising of spirits. 
These several subjects have, in the 
last 50 generations, absorbed the 
lives of at least 10,000 men in each, 
amid the veneration or fear of the 
vulgar of all ranks. 

Galileo, the father of modern phi¬ 
losophy, in alluding to the general 
doctrine, in 1610, that the tides are 
occasioned by the attraction of the 
moon, says, “the tides are local and 
sensible, and cannot be brought to 
obey occult qualities, and such like 
vain fancies; all which are so far 
from being the cause of the tide, that, 
on the contrary, it is the cause of 
them, inasmuch as it creates the idea 
of attraction in brains more apt for 
loquacity and ostentation than for 
inquiry into the secrets of nature; 
and, who, rather than be driven to 
pronounce the wise, ingenuous, and 
modest words, ‘ I dont know ,’ blurt 
from their tongues all sorts of extra¬ 
vagances.” He referred the tides 
to the annual and diurnal motions; 
and, if he had superadded the moon 
on the same principle, his theory 
would have been complete. 

Lord Bacon, who was one of the 
logical subdividers and generalizers 
of his age, ascribes the prevalence 
of errour to four causes, which he 
calls idols. His first idol was that 
of the tribe , by which he meant the 
popular errours of the human race; 


the next were those of the den , which 

were those of self-love and vanity; 
the third were idols of the forum , 
that class of errours which arise 
from the use of words, which, when 
analyzed, have not the sense im¬ 
puted to them. His last class were 
idols of the theatre, by which he im¬ 
pugned the systems, forced on the 
world by schools and universities, 
whose publick parade tends to mis¬ 
lead the judgement. He also recom¬ 
mended, that experiment and fact 
should precede general inductions, a 
principle so obvious that it must have 
been recognised in every age. His 
own errours were however nume¬ 
rous ; he attacked the system of 
Copernicus; he believed in witch¬ 
craft and astrology; he was sup* 
posed to be the editor of King 
James’s Book against witches; ana 
he decried the researches of Gilbert, 
the only experimentalist in his age. 

The instantice crusis of Lord Ba¬ 
con is, when a particular fact agrees 
with only one of two or more hypo¬ 
theses. The experimentum crucis 
is, when a fact proves a particular 
hypothesis, and accords with no 
other. 

The idea of a principle of general 
gravitation commenced with the an¬ 
cients. Pythagoras stated, that the 
gravity of a planet is four times that 
of another which is twice the dis¬ 
tance. Anaxagoras and Plutarch 
ascribed the circumstance of celes¬ 
tial bodies not falling together, to 
the rapidity of their motions; and 
Lucretius ascribed it to the infinite 
size of the universe. Copernicus as¬ 
cribed gravity to the providence of 
the Supreme Being; and Galileo 
considered each planet as governing 
its own laws of gravity. Kepler 
says, that, if the moon and earth 
were not retained by some equiva¬ 
lent force, the earth would ascend a 
54th part towards the moon, while 
the moon would move over the re¬ 
maining 53 parts if they both have the 
same density. These are the funda¬ 
mental principles of the modern doc¬ 
trine of gravitation. But Dr. Hooke, 
in 1674, states distinctly that the 
heavenly bodies have an attraction 
or gravitation towards their own 
centres, which extends to other 
•bodies, within the sphere of their 
activity ; and that all bodies would 





PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


move m straight lines if some force 
like this did not continually act on 
Newton’s Principia, which appeared 
in 1687, was palpably a commentary 
on these opinions. 

■m3? 16 P ar *- °f the Newtonian 
I hilosophy, as delivered by the au¬ 
thor, except his optical discoveries, 
&c., is contained in his Principia, or 
Mathematical Principles of Natural 
Philosophy. 

1st law. Every body perseveres 
in its state of rest, or of uniform mo- 
tl0 n j 1 a line, unless it is com¬ 
pelled to change that state by forces 
impressed upon it. 

2d law. The alteration of motion 
is always proportional to the motive 
force impressed, and is made in the 
direction of the right line in which 
that force is impressed. 

3d law. To every action there is 
always opposed an equal re-action ; 
or the mutual actions of two bodies 
upon each other, are always equal, 
and directed to contrary parts. 
Thus, whatever draws or presses 
another, is as much drawn or press¬ 
ed by that other, &c. 

From this axiom, or law, Newton 
deduces the following corollaries:— 

L A body impelled by two forces 
conjoined will describe the diagonal 
of a parallelogram, in the same time 
that it would describe the sides by 
those forces apart. 

2. Hence is explained the compo¬ 
sition of any one direct force out of 
any two oblique ones, viz. by making 
the two oblique forces the sides of a 
parallelogram, and the diagonal the 
direct one. 

3. The quantity of motion, which 
is collected by taking the sum of the 
motions directed towards the same 
parts, and the difference of those that 
are directed to contrary parts, suffers 
no change from the action of bodies 
among themselves, because the mo¬ 
tion which one body loses is com¬ 
municated to another. 

4. The common centre of gravity 
of two or more bodies does not alter 
its state of motion or rest by the ac¬ 
tions of the bodies among themselves, 
and therefore the common centre of 
gravity of all bodies acting upon each 
other, (excluding external actions 


_ 257 

and impediments) is either at rest, 

or moves uniformly in a right line. 

5. The motions of bodies included 
in a given space are the same among 
themselves, whether that space is at 
rest, or moves uniformly forward in 
a right line, without any circular mo¬ 
tion. The truth of this is evident 
from the experiment of a ship, where 
all motions are just the same, whe¬ 
ther the ship is at rest, or proceeds 
uniformly forward in a straight line. 

6. If bodies, any how moved 
among themselves, are urged in the 
direction of parallel lines, by equal 
accelerative forces, they will all con¬ 
tinue to move among themselves, 
after the same manner as if they had 
not been urged by such forces. 

The mathematical part of the 
Newtonian philosophy depends chief¬ 
ly on the following lemmas, espe¬ 
cially the first, containing the doc¬ 
trine of prime and ultimate ratios. 

Lemma 1. Quantities, and the ra¬ 
tios of quantities, which, in any finite 
term, converge continually to equali¬ 
ty, and before the end of that time 
approach nearer the one to the other 
than by any given difference, be¬ 
come ultimately equal. 

Lemma 2. Shows, that, in a space 
bounded by two right lines and a 
curve, if an infinite number of paral¬ 
lelograms are inscribed, all of equal 
breadth, then the ultimate ratio of 
the curve space, and the sum of the 
parallelograms, will be a ratio of 
equality. 

Lemma 3. Shows that the same 
thing is true when the breadths of 
the parallelograms are unequal. 

In the succeeding lemmas it is 
shown, in like manner, that the ulti¬ 
mate ratios of the sine, chord, and 
tangent, of arcs infinitely diminished, 
are ratios of equality; and therefore 
that in all our reasonings about 
these, we may safely use the one for 
the other; that the ultimate form of 
evanescent triangles, made by the 
arc, chord, or tangent, is that of simi¬ 
litude, and their ultimate ratio is that 
of equality; and hence, in reasonings 
about ultimate ratios, these triangles 
may safely be used one for another, 
whether they are made with the sine, 
the arc, or the tangent. He then 
demonstrates some properties of the 
ordinates of curvilinear figures, and 
shows that the spaces which a body 







268 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


describes by any finite force urging 
it, whether that force is determinate 
and immutable, or continually va¬ 
ried, are, to each other, in the very 
beginning of the motion, in the du¬ 
plicate ratio of the forces; and, last¬ 
ly, having added some demonstra¬ 
tions concerning the evanescence of 
angles of contact, he proceeds to lay 
down the mathematical part of his 
system, which depends on the fol¬ 
lowing theorems:— 

Theorem 1.—The areas which re¬ 
volving bodies describe by radii 
drawn to an immoveable centre of 
force, lie in the same immoveable 
planes, and are proportional to the 
times m which they are described. 

Theorem 2.—Every body that 
moves in any curve line, described 
in a plane, and by a radius drawn to 
a point either immoveable or moving 
forward with a uniform rectilinear 
motion, describes about that point 
areas proportional to the times, and 
is urged by a centripetal force direct¬ 
ed to that point. 

Theorem 3.—Every body that, by 
a radius drawn to the centre of a.no- 
ther body, any how moved, describes 
areas about that centre proportional 
to the times, is urged by a force com¬ 
pounded of the centripetal forces 
tending to that other body, and of 
the whole accelerative force by which 
that other body is impelled. 

Theorem 4.—The centripetal forces 
of bodies which by equal motions 
describe different circles, tend to the 
centres of the same circles; and are 
one to the other as the squares of 
the arcs described in equal times, ap -1 
plied to the radii of the circles. 

On these and such like principles 
depends the Newtonian mathemati¬ 
cal philosophy. The author further 
shows how to find the centre to 
which the forces impelling any body 
are directed,having the velocity of the 
body given; and finds that the cen¬ 
trifugal force is always as the versed 
sine of the nascent arc directly, and 
as the square of the time inverse¬ 
ly; or directly as the square of the 
velocity, and inversely as the chord 
of the nascent arc. From these pre¬ 
mises he deduces the method of find¬ 
ing the centripetal force directed to 
any given point when the body re¬ 
volves in a circle; and this, whether 
the central point is near at hand, or 


at immense distance; so that all the 

lines drawn from it may be taken for 
parallels. And he shows the same 
thing with regard to bodies revolv¬ 
ing m spirals, ellipses, hyperbolas, 
or parabolas. He shows, also, hav¬ 
ing the figures of the orbits given, 
how to find the velocities and mov¬ 
ing powers ; and indeed resolves 
the most difficult problems relating 
to the celestial bodies. 

In the second book, Newton treats 
of the properties and motion of fluids, 
and their powers of resistance, with 
the motion of bodies through such 
resisting mediums, those resistances 
being in the ratio of any powers of 
the velocities; and the motions being 
either made in right lines or curves, 
or vibrating like pendulums. 

In the third book he demonstrates 
the frame of the system of the world. 

The phenomena first considered 
are, 1. That the satellites of Jupiter, 
by radii drawn to his centre, describe 
areas proportional to the times of 
description; and that their perio- 
dick times, the fixed stars being at 
rest, are in the sesquiplicate ratio of 
their distances from that centre. 2. 
The same thing is likewise observed 
of the phenomena of Saturn. 3. The 
five primary planets, Mercury, Ve¬ 
nus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, with their 
several orbits, encompass the sun. 
4. The fixed stars being supposed at 
rest, the periodick times of the said 
five primary planets, and of the earth 
about the sun, are in the sesquipli¬ 
cate proportion of their mean dis¬ 
tances from the sun. 5. The pri¬ 
mary planets, by radii drawn to the 
earth, describe areas no ways pro¬ 
portionable to the times; but the 
areas which they describe by radii 
drawn to the sun, are proportional 
to the times of description. 6. The 
moon, by a radius drawn to the cen¬ 
tre of the earth, describes an area 
proportional to the time of descrip¬ 
tion. All which phenomena are 
clearly evinced by astronomical ob¬ 
servations. 

The mathematical demonstrations 
are next applied by Newton, in the 
following propositions:— 

Proposition 1.—The forces by 
which the satellites of Jupiter are 
continually drawn off from rectili¬ 
near motions and retained in their 






269 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


proper orbits, tend to the centre of 
that planet, and are reciprocally as 
the squares of the distances of those 
satellites from that centre. 

Proposition 2.—The same thing is 
true of the primary planets, with re¬ 
spect to the sun’s centre. 

Proposition 3.—The same thing is 
also true of the moon, in respect of 
the earth’s centre. 

Proposition 4.—The moon gravi¬ 
tates towards the earth; and by the 
force of gravity is continually drawn 
off from a rectilinear motion, and re¬ 
tained in her orbit. 

Proposition 5.—The same thing is 
true of all the other planets, both pri¬ 
mary and secondary, each with re¬ 
spect to the centre of its motion. 

Proposition 6.—All bodies gravi-: 
tate towards every planet; and the 
weights of bodies towards any one 
and the same planet, at eoual dis¬ 
tances from its centre, are propor¬ 
tional to the quantities of matter they 
contain. 

Proposition 7.—There is a power 
of gravity tending to all bodies, pro¬ 
portional to the several quantities of 
matter which they contain. 

Proposition 8.—That planets per¬ 
form their orbits between the said 
force of gravity and a centrifugal or 
projectile force originally implanted 
in them, and continue uniform owing 
to the motions being performed in 
spaces, so devoid of matter as not 
to oppose any sensible resistance; 
which projectile force was originally 
a rectilinear motion, from which they 
have been deflected into orbits by the 
attraction of universal gravity. 

Proposition 9.—That as no me¬ 
chanical cause can be assigned for 
the projectile force, none for the gra¬ 
vitating force, and none for the rota¬ 
tion of planets on their axes, so all 
those phenomena must be referred 
to the immediate agency of the Su¬ 
preme Being. 

These, and many other proposi¬ 
tions and corollaries, are proved or 
illustrated by a great variety of ex¬ 
periments, in all the great points of 
physical astronomy. 

The preceding system of Sir Isaac 
Newton being founded on the sup¬ 
posed attractions and repulsions of 
matter which are mechanically im¬ 


possible ; on a principle of universal 
attraction of gravitation, assumed on 
the alleged fall of the moon 16 feet 
in a minute, whereas it is 128814 
feet; and on a miraculous projectile 
force acting in a vacuum, Sir Rich¬ 
ard Phillips has, in contrast, pro¬ 
mulgated a strictly mechanical sys¬ 
tem, in which the simple motions, 
and momenta of bodies among one 
another, are proved to be the proxi¬ 
mate causes of all material pheno¬ 
mena. 

Postijlata 1. A body remains at 
rest unless impressed by another bo¬ 
dy in motion. 2. A body, impressed 
by a moving body, acquires motion. 
3. The motion acquired is in the di¬ 
rection of the mover. 4. The force 
is exerted on the side opposite to the 
parts to which the body subsequently 
moves. 5. A body is in force, or has 
the power of moving another body 
only in the direction in which it 
moves. 6. Momentum, or force, is 
the quantity multiplied by the velo¬ 
city. 7. After a body in motion has 
impelled a body at rest, the momen¬ 
tum of the mover is divided between 
the two. 8. After a body in motion 
has impelled a body at rest, the quan¬ 
tity moved is increased, but the velo¬ 
city diminished. 9. Momentum be¬ 
ing always divided, none is ever lost. 
10. The display of any force or power 
is always evidence that some matter 
or body is in motion. 11. A body 
cannot act where it is not present. 
12. A body cannot move another 
body towards itself, by impressing 
the opposite side where it is not pre¬ 
sent, i. e. there is no attraction. 13. 
A body cannot be moving one way, 
and be the cause of another body 
moving in the opposite direction, i. e. 
there is no repulsion. 14. Bodies 
may be in force from motion, though 
relatively at rest, when parts of a 
moving system, as in the cabin of a 
ship. 15. The force of weight is 
either the motion or propulsion of a 
body towards the centre of the earth. 
16. Bodies in motion, in one direc¬ 
tion, require greater force to turn 
them into a new direction, i. e. there 
is no vis inertia. 17. The power of 
bodies in motion, called action, being 
divided with bodies moved, called re¬ 
action, the quantity parted with is 
equal to that received, i. e. action 
and re-action are equal. 18. That 
the force of a body moving in gas is 






PHILOSOPHY”, &c. 


260 

transmitted through gas, by the mo¬ 
tion acquired by tne intervening 
atoms of the gas. 

His fundamental principles are—1. 
That a great progressive motion of 
a mass, combined simultaneously 
with a less motion of rotation, pro¬ 
duces a resulting aggregation of the 
parts, and a centripetal force in all 
the parts, which is directly as the 
absolute progressive velocity, and 
inversely as the relative deflecting 
rotative velocity. 

2. That a progressive motion of 
any system of bodies immersed in 
a gaseous medium, which medium 
transmits the circular motions of a 
larger body to any less one, occasions 
the progressive motion to be a col¬ 
lapsing force towards the central 
body, and the circular motion to be a 
tangent force on the less bodies. 

3. That motions, or forces propa- 
ated through gas, are, at different 
istances, inversely as the cube of 

the distance, and directly as the quan¬ 
tities of matter in the bodies and their 
velocity of motion. Because the in¬ 
tervening atoms receiving the mo¬ 
tions, are as the spaces, and these 
are as the cubes of the distance ; and 
the primary force is as the momen¬ 
tum, that is, as the quantity multi¬ 
plied by the velocity. 

4. That, in a progressing and ro¬ 
tating system, either the progressing 
mass of a revolving planet, or pro¬ 
gressing planet and revolving satel¬ 
lite, or progressing sun and revolving 
planets, the centre alone of the pla¬ 
net, or major body, moves with uni¬ 
form velocity ; and all the rotations 
or revolutions are deflections, or 
added motions of the parts, produced 
by abstractions from the force of the 
centre, and, therefore, retard the mo¬ 
tion of progression of the mass. 
Thus, the earth would move faster 
in its orbit if it did not turn round ; 
and it would move faster if it did not 
impart the force which moves the 
moon; so with other planets and so 
with the sun. 

5. That progressive absolute mo¬ 
tion of a system of bodies, as the 
progression of a ship, vehicle, or pla¬ 
net, to which motion all its parts are 
alike subject, produces among the 
parts a force towards the line of 
motion, or line described by the cen¬ 
tre of the mass; but other pheno¬ 


mena arise among the parts when¬ 

ever any relative motion affects some 
of them more than others, as when 
the system so progressing is made 
to turn round its centre with velo¬ 
cities of the parts according to the 
distance from the axis of rotation; 
they will then exhibit peculiar mutual 
results, or actions and reactions to¬ 
wards the centre, determined by the 
ratio of their several relative and de¬ 
flective motions, to their common 
progressive velocity. 

Corollary 1. If the centre does not 
progress, but the force of rotation is 
derived externally, as from the hand, 
or a winch, then this force will be 
displayed in the flying off'of the parts 
in tangents. 

2. If there is only a progressive 
motion and no rotatory, then the 
parts will form a train, and seek with 
force the common line of motion. 

3. Progression and rotation, simul¬ 
taneously, correct both causes of 
dispersion ; for progression collapses 
the divergent action of rotation, and 
rotation checks the tendency of pro¬ 
gression to form a train. 

4. If, as in a planet whose rotation 
is derived from its progression in a 
curved orbit, the velocity of rotation 
could be made equal to that of pro¬ 
gression,. the planet would become 
stationary; and, if the rotation were 
greater, the parts would fly off in 
tangents ; but, while the progression 
is greater, the parts between both 
tendencies necessarily fall to the 
centre. 

5. The force of rotation being de¬ 
rived from the force of progression, 
is, of course, always less, and there¬ 
fore the parts of all planets. fall to¬ 
wards the centre; or, if not falling, 
have the force called weight or gra¬ 
vis ; and hence also satellites respect 
the centre of primaries, and planets 
the centre of the sun. 

6. In such a system it makes no 
difference whether any part or side is 
moving before or after the centre, or 
direct, or contrary, or oblique, be¬ 
cause no part or side moves by itself, 
but is in mechanical connexion with 
opposed sides, one being in direction 
plus , and the other in direction mi¬ 
nus ; so that the average or mean 
result of the two sides governs 
the whole in necessary equilibrium, 




around a common centre determined 

by both motions, which centre is not 
deflected like the other parts, but is 
always moving with the uniform 
progressive velocity. 

APPLICATION TO FACTS. 

1. The earth moves in its orbit 
about 98170 feet per second, which, 
in a ratio with the diurnal rotation, 
may be taken as a straight line, then 
this rotation derived from the other 
is 1525.4 feet. Then taking O as orbit, 
R as rotation, and F as fall, we have 

p-=F=64.3488, for the centripetal 

force of a body at the equator, taken 
as a line only. 

II. But the rotation of a line or 
hoop being simply as the radius 
only, that of the equatorial plane is 
as the square, or area, of the diame¬ 
ter of the equatorial plane, and that 
of the whole revolving sphere is 
four times this area ; consequently 

^-^=F, or 16.0872, which is known, 

by experiment, to be the mean fall 
all over the earth per second. 

Corollary 1. For other times, the 
continuous force produces accelera¬ 
tion by Galileo’s law, as the square 
of the number of seconds. 

2. As the acceleration is caused by 
two motions, so the fall would be¬ 
come equable in 189 seconds, when 
the velocity becomes equal per second 
to the rotative force of the sphere. 

3. That the equation -^-=F ap- 

4 AV 

plies to all planets, and is local and 
special in each, and F has therefore 
no connexion with any property of 
matter, called the attraction of uni¬ 
versal gravitation. 

4. That ~=F is 0=4 R X F, 

4 R 

hence, the two last being known, we 
have the size of the orbit and distance 
of the sun. 

5. A second is recognised as a 
standard time, because it is the first 
and last mean, the fall in half a se¬ 
cond being four feet, and that in a 
second ana a half 36 feet, 32 feet be¬ 
ing the fall in this first second, of 
which a second is the mean, or 16 
feet. 


_ 261 

III. The centripetal effect is the 

same in the parallels as at the equa¬ 
tor, because the force is as the square 
of the radius, and this is equal to the 
square of the sine and cosine every 
where ; while their diagonals are the 
common radii. At the poles, the sine 
becomes the radius; and, at the equa¬ 
tor, the cosine. The equation for dif¬ 
ferent latitudes is V X ——— x 4. 

cos. lat. 

Corollary. All the parts of the same 
sphere must be equally affected, and 
all the actions and reactions directed 
to and from the common centre. 

IV. F X R (4 R) being = O, so F 

and R are the sides of a rectangle 
equal to O; and as F : V O :: V 
O : R, t. e. 16.08728 : 313.27 313.27 : 

6101.6. The first term being the 
known fall of. a body; the second 
and third the square root of 98170, 
the mean orbit motion per second; 
and, the fourth, the rotative force of 
the whole surface. 

V. As it is for bodies at the earth, 
so it is, by exact analogy, for the 
moon. The earth’s momentum is 
the rectangle of its relative bulk to 
the moon 46.95, by its own velocity 
98170 feet per second = 4609000; and 
this rectangle is exactly equal to the 
square of the two equal forces, which 
produce the moon’s true mean orbit 
motion of 3371.35 per second, found, 
by dividing 7958 millions of feet in 
orbit, by 2360591 seconds. For V46- 
.95 X 98170 = 2146.9= the sides of 
the said square, and = the equal tan¬ 
gent and central force at right angles. 
Then 2146.9 X 1.5708 for the sub¬ 
tended equivalent arc, gives 3371.35 
feet exactly. The distance is taken 
at 240,000 miles, but whether more 
or less all the results would equally 
accord. 

Corollary 1. How gross the im¬ 
posture then of founding a system on 
a fictitious fall of 16 feet per minute, 
the real fall being, exactly, 128814 
feet per minute, while the equal divi¬ 
sion of the radius of the orbit gives 
139,000 feet! How juggling, too, to 
compare a paper fall at the moon 
with a real fall at the earth; and how 
delusive, even under that juggle, to 
take a minute, when even the juggle 
itself would hold for no other time ! 
How strange, too, to assign a fall 
of only 16 feet during a motion, ra- 


PHILOSO PHY, &c. 







262 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


pidly curved, of 202281 feet! But 
the wonder, after all, is far less, that 
a system-maker should be seduced 
to make the assertion, than that ma¬ 
thematicians, and men of moral 
worth, should, from 1687 to 1831, 
have been mistaken enough to be¬ 
lieve, and teach such nonsense with 
solemn emphasis. 

2. The satellite systems of Jupiter, 
Saturn, and Herschel would be go¬ 
verned by the bulks and orbit velo- 
locity, like the above; but the rec¬ 
tangle would be equal to the squares ; 
of the forces of all the moons, and, ; 
in investigating them, it is convenient 
to consider them as a mean moon! 
at a mean distance, 

VI. As it is with the earth and 
moon, or planets and moons, so it is 
with a sun and planets. A moving 
system demands a moving centre ; 
and, as aggregation and centripeta- 
tion exist in the sun, though it pal¬ 
pably rotates, so it must progress 
through space, attended by its sys¬ 
tem, just as his miniature-system 
progresses with Jupiter. If tne fall 
at the sun was the same as that at 
the earth, its rotation of 7418 feet per 
second would demand 474752 feet of 
progressive motion. But consider¬ 
ing the rectangle of its bulk by its 
velocity, as equal to the rectangles 
of all known planets, or to the rec¬ 
tangle of a mean planet 590930000 
miles distant, whose two equal forces 
would be 23610, the sun, 557 times 
larger, would have to move 1000000 
of feet nearly; if more planets, and 
twice the matter, the motion would be 
730,000 feet; or, if thrice, then 435,- 
500 feet. Hence, the motion is 
about 6 or 700 thousand feet per se¬ 
cond. 

Corollary. The sun, probably, 
obeys some motion of the cluster of 
the milky way to which it apper¬ 
tains. 

VII. The orbits of planets are 
generated in location where the col¬ 
lapsing force to the centre, and the 
rotation of the gas of space, have 
equal force in accord with the mag¬ 
nitude of the mass. It is there 
moved within certain limits, varied 
mechanically, and independently 
of the primitive forces. When a 
planet starts from its mean distance, 
the two equal forces would move it 
in a diagonal right line; but the 


gaseous tangent force carries it out¬ 

wardly, and it passes diagonally be¬ 
tween the mean tangent of an incre¬ 
mental arc and its chord, every suc¬ 
ceeding chord being equal to every 
preceding mean tangent. Then, as 
the end of one mean tangent joins 
another at the outer corner, and each 
is in succession directed outwardly, 
the distance increased till it becomes 
too great for both primitive forces; 
and, at 90°, the chord becomes equal 
to the mean tangent of the whole 
quadrant. The orbit being now too 
large for the first forces, the planet 
moves slowly, till the central or 
chordal force prevails, turning the 
direction and carrying the planet to 
the inner corners of the rectangles 
of the little arcs, till it arrives at the 
perihelion, where the forces so in¬ 
crease as to give ascendency to the 
tangent force, which carries it again 
to the outer corners, till it reaches 
the aphelion. 

Corollary 1. The quantity which 
the planet is carried out by the tan¬ 
gent force referred to the radius, is 
the eccentricity; and an approxima¬ 
tion of the series on these data, gives 
a sum which adds, as near as possi¬ 
ble, • 0337 to the major axis. 

2. The sun is the constant centre 
of every increment, and the centre 
of the solar system ; the foci and 
orbits being merely pictorial. 

3. This problem may also be con¬ 
sidered in relation to the increase 
and decrease of the angle of 90°, 
which occur between the forces, as 
one of them decreases or increases 
the distance, a variation which would 
also account for the ellipticity. 

4. The previous explication refers 
to mechanical causes, the variations 
of force; while it admits that varia¬ 
tion of angle in the two forces, which, 
in Newton’s explication of orbits, re¬ 
quired only a mechanical origin to 
be satisfactory. 

IX. The rotation of a planet is 
caused also by the same forces, one 
directed to the sun, and the other on 
the right-hand side, so that each af¬ 
fects half the planet, but both one 
quadrant; while its opposite quad¬ 
rant is unaffected by either. The 
orbit, then, is in the direction from 
that quadrant to this other; and 
then, if the planet moved in the 







PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


263 


usual diagonal, the centre would de¬ 

scribe that line; but the line of di¬ 
rection is 5° 32' beside the centre, and 
hence the rotation. Thus,the direction 
from the chord to the mean tangent, 
at once creates the curvilinear orbit 
and the rotation. In a quadrant, in 
round numbers, it occasions the pla¬ 
nets to move through 1.5708,at an an¬ 
gle of 50° 32',instead of 1.41415 at 45°, 
while the gross force, in the diagonal 
of the chord and the mean tangent, 
is 1.7316, at 54° 44'. Mechanically, 
in the phenomena of a planet, cceteris 
paribus, the earth’s orbit force is a 
rectangle, formed by the mean tan¬ 
gent of a quadrant with its chord ; 
of which rectangle a portion is the 
earth’s orbit motion, or the rectan¬ 
gle of the diagonal of the chord and 
mean tangent; and the remainder 
of the first rectangle is exactly equal 
to the quantity of the rotation, and 
the eccentricity divided by the force 
of the obliquity. 

Corollary. That, by the general 
action of the centrifugal and centri¬ 
petal forces, we know that the re¬ 
sulting mean tangential force is as 
8, ana the mean chordal force as 
5.656856, taken for the 4 mean quad¬ 
rants. Then the planet oscillates, 
as it were, between these lines (act¬ 
ing as alternate chord and tangent) 
in an orbit, which, as a mean circle, 
would be 6.28318; but, as an ellipsis 
is in the earth .0337 more, or 6.3033. 
But the mean proportional of the tan¬ 
gents and the chords is 6.7214, and this 
less 6.3033, leaves 0.4181, for an ex¬ 
cess of force not required in the pro¬ 
duction of the actual orbit, and 
therefore applicable to the whole 
rotation. In proof that it is so, 

^ 72 ^ —16.08 the known ratio of the 
0.4181 

two forces; and further, in the earth, 
as 6.7214 : 0.4181:: 585112000 (the 
whole orbit) : 36370000=365.24 X 
24896 X 4. Hence, it appears, that 
such is the mechanical or geometri¬ 
cal harmony, and such the provision 
for the uniform organization of mat¬ 
ter, that fall and weight is the same 
in all planets; and then, knowing 
the distances and circumferences, 
we can approximate the rotative 
forces, and the number of rotations 
or days in any orbit. 

VIII. The ratio of the times and 
distances is not that promulgated 


by Kepler, for the forces in space, 
propagated in gas, are as not as 

; and every planet is acted upon 

by two forces each, as at right 
D 3 

angles. Their hypotenuse is the 
orbit, which, in times of D, governs 
the times, not the original force,or one 
of them. Then twice the square of 
1 2 

is -i-, the square root of which 

j~or , as the orbit force go¬ 
verning the times; which, being in¬ 
versely as the force, T is as D 15 - 
That is T: t :: D 1-5 to d L5 - But T and 
D 15 being known in the earth, it be¬ 
comes 1.83 X 1 1 universally. That 
is, the distance of any planet from 
the sun, is the cube-root of the 
square of its period, multiplied by 
1.83. 

Corollary. The law ^, adopted 

by Newton, because it resembled 
light and heat on a surface, would 
2 

give V —, and T as D 0 - 5 which is 

absurd. He took one of two forces, 
instead of their result in the orbit 
which they produced, and which 
orbit force governs the times. 

IX. The precession of the equi¬ 
noxes, or falling back of the earth’s 
nodes, and the advance of the line of 
apsides, are two different displays of 
the very same motion as their com¬ 
mon cause. The earth, like every 
other body which goes round in a 
circle, or orbit, turns once on its own 
axis, as a mere consequence of its 
orbit revolution; and this motion is 
displayed in its orbit by an advance 
of the orbit itself, or in the apsides of 
the orbit, equal to a circumference 
measured in the stars, i. e. in the re¬ 
lation of the equator to the ecliptick; 
and, by an anticipation of the nodes 
as a mere terrestrial phenomenon, 
relatively measured and determined 
as to the stars in the relations of the 
ecliptick, to the terrestrial equator. 
The circumference of the earth, 24896 
miles, is therefore an exact mean 
proportional of the two in quantity; 
and so, also, in angular motion ; and 






264 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


also m periods; 24896, in the eclip- 
tick is 27141 for the apsides per an¬ 
num ; and, in the equator, is 22338 
miles for the precession. That is, C' 2 
= A. X P. The angles are 50.1". 
Precession 61.98". Apsides, and their 
mean proportional, is 56.277" for the 
circumference. And the periods are 
25868 precession, 20910 aspides, and 
their mean proportional 23255. The 
angular quantities are 22382 miles 
and 27692, and still exact propor¬ 
tionals to 24896. The angular differ¬ 
ences over the trigonometrical, in a 
year, are 551 apsides—456 preces¬ 
sion, and in similar ratio; while their 
mean, 501, is exactly what the moon 
would add, i. e. a 49th or 50th to 
each, or to the acceleration of the 
earth’s orbit from its rotation on its 
axis in connexion with its satellite. 

Corollary 1. The moon’s mean 
circumference is 6836 miles, and her 
nodes fall back 5166 seconds, or 
6800 miles, which, as above, reduced 
to the ecliptick, is 6836 exactly. 

2. Of course, as the angle 56.277", 
the mean proportional of the known 
angles 50". 1 and 61".98, is=24,896 
miles, so we determine the orbit, 
and that the mean distance of the 
sun is between 92 and 93 millions of 
miles, without considering the effect 
of the moon on the angular motion. 

X. That Tides arise from the sen¬ 
sible yielding of the mobile waters 
to those reactions of the moon which 
carry the earth round the mechani¬ 
cal centre of both, and they are in¬ 
versely as the angle of the earth’s 
orbit motion to the direction of the 
said reactions; while the opposed 
tides arise from the necessary equa¬ 
lity of the two sides of the rotating 
earth, so that if one side is enlarged 
by a tide, (the earth’s centre being a 
point determined by greater forces,) 
then the mobile waters on the op¬ 
posite side rise mechanically by the 
force of the opposite side, and restore 
the equilibrium of bulk and momen¬ 
tum of both sides. 

XI. That, from similar causes, the 
reaction of the earth to the sun, 
which is first displayed by the mo¬ 
bile waters, these are most affected in 
the perihelion, and least in the aphe¬ 
lion ; and hence the perihelion de¬ 
mands in its line of action the cen¬ 
trifugal force of more water than the 


aphelion, by which the seas follow it 
from hemisphere to hemisphere, as 
it varies its declination. Its declina¬ 
tion is now in 23° south, and there¬ 
fore the seas preponderate in the 
southern hemisphere; but when, in 
less than 10,455 years, the declina¬ 
tion becomes 23° north, the seas will 
then equally preponderate in the 
northern hemisphere. The difference 
of force is as 11 in the perihelion to 
10 in the aphelion. These regular 
alternations of the seas are, therefore, 
the chief cause of the various land 
and marine strata, while it appears, 
from their succession and number, 
that the perihelion must many times 
have progressed around the ecliptick 
in periods of 20,910 years. 

Corollary. Of course, as quanti¬ 
ties of intervening gas are moved by 
the central force, and as the same 
force will move only the same quan¬ 
tity in the same times, the dimen¬ 
sions, or area, of the volume of 
moved gas, must in the same times 
be equal; but the proposition is only 
an amusing harmony, because the 
orbits must be as the forces, greater 
when nearer, and less when farther 
off. 

XII. That as comets, however they 
originate, pass through the solar sys¬ 
tem generally at high angles, so their 
deflections are created by the sun’s 
diffused action in his sphere of action, 
which is inversely as the cube of the 
cosine and as the sines. In like 
manner the perturbations of the 
planets are inversely as the cube of 
the cosine of their spheres of action, 
and as the sines subordinate to the 
solar force. On this principle all the 
orbits of comets may be reduced to 
the utmost degree of precision. So, 
also, with the perturbations of the 
planets themselves, their orbs of ac¬ 
tion interfere inversely as the cube 
of the cosine and as the sine of their 
latitudes. 

Cor. The sun being the centre of 
the system, and all the motions in 
it being abstracted from the sun, 
whose motions are a remainder, so, 
the sun’s motions admitting of no 
modification from the parts, any dis¬ 
turbances among them are speedily 
corrected by the absolute force of the 
centre. 

XIII. Facts do not enable us to 





265 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


determine the cause of the sun’s pro¬ 

gression, but that progression is the 
proximate cause of the orbit revolu¬ 
tions of the planets, while their rota¬ 
tions on their axes are abstractions 
from their own orbit velocity; and 
the momentum of each planetary 
mass is then the source of all the 
motions, combinations, powers, ac¬ 
tions, re-actions, vegetable, and ani¬ 
mal life, &c. &c. which are display¬ 
ed by its parts and atoms on its sur¬ 
face or elsewhere. All these are so 
many deflections from, and excite¬ 
ments to, the terrestrial momentum, 
and they begin in it and are ulti¬ 
mately returned to it ; while the ter¬ 
restrial momentum is itself part of 
the momentum of the sun, which 
fosters, by its light and heat, (the 
momenta of its atoms) all those 
multitudinous phenomena which it 
generates by the momentum of its 
mass. Sucn is the scheme of na¬ 
ture—such the solar, and perhaps 
the general, system of the vast ma¬ 
terial universe. 

XIY. That other pretended proofs 
of an absurd principle of attraction 
are almost beneath contempt. In 
an elastick atmosphere, its pressure 
on bodies is in right lines, and the 
force inversely as the cube of the 
lines. If the lines then, on one side, 
are shortened by any interception, 
the longer lines of force on the op¬ 
posite side press the body towards 
the intercepting object. In this way 
floating corks intercept each other’s 
pressure, and go together; so boats 
incline to intercepting ships, plum¬ 
mets to intercepting mountains, and 
nicely-poised lead-balls, and drops 
of water and mercury, yield to each 
other’s interception. Inis law, and 
fitting forms, are the causes of all 
chymical attraction, and of the as¬ 
cent in capillary tubes; while the 
attractions of electricity and its mo¬ 
difications in galvanism and mag¬ 
netism, arise from a separation of 
atoms usually in fit combination; 
and the effort to restoration affects 
bodies placed in the space in which 
the effort exists. The whole is me¬ 
chanical, and, in reasoning, we must 
consider in all cases the modus ope¬ 
randi; or, we only mystify and ob¬ 
struct inquiry , and have no real 
kncnvledge. 

Space , according to this system, is 


the extension of matter, or of matter 
in motion, or, in fine, the extension 
of material power ; every equal space 
having witnin it equal momentum, 
or a tending to equality, created by 
more matter and less motion, or by 
less matter and more motion. 

There is no space void of material 
ower, owing to the elasticity or or- 
it motions of atoms of gas, which 
enlarge as any space presents itself, 
that is less filled with power than 
any other space, as in the pores of 
bodies, and spaces between the pla¬ 
nets and stars. 

Matter , under all circumstances, 
is. in great motion. In solid forms 
in a planet it moves with the planet, 
and presses mechanically towards 
the centre of motion. By rotation, 
velocity is superadded as density 
lessens, or as distances from the 
centre. In fluids and gases, its 
atoms also are in great intestine re¬ 
gular motions; motion taken away 
produces fixity, or imparted confers 
fluidity. 

Motion is transferred from body 
to body, because bodies in motion 
unite or conjoin with others, and 
when these are at rest the bulk js 
merely increased, and the.velocity is 
continued of the whole inversely as 
the new bulk to the old; and when 
the transfer is effected by a change to 
intermediate atoms as in gases, and 
then by these to a body at rest, the 
transfer is as the number of atoms 
diffusing the motion, or inversely as 
the cube of the distance. 

Impulse , or impact , moves a body 
at rest, because, for a moment, that 
body partakes of the momentum of 
the impeller ; and the motion is con¬ 
tinued, because, in advancing a body 
creates a nascent vacuum in its rear, 
which other matter closes with force, 
and the motion only abates by the 
transfer to the atoms encountered in 
front. 

As every body parts with its mo¬ 
tion only to other bodies which then 
display it, so action is transferring 
motion, and re-action is receiving 
what is transferred, both therefore 
equal. Percussion is one mode of 
parting with motion, Friction an¬ 
other, and Resistance another, all 
resolvable into mere union. Re¬ 
fections and Deflections arise from 




266 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


the velocity being parted with only 
on the striking side ; and direct re¬ 
bounding arises from the striking 
side parting with its motion before 
the rear side, which produces a con¬ 
tinuous blow. Inertia is the mere 
consequence of all matter being in 
some previous motion to that in 
which any new force is applied, for 
without motion, matter has no kind 
of force. 

Past mistakes and controversies, 
about Space, Time, Power, &c., have 
risen from inattention to Gas, and 
ignorance of its construction ; about 
motion, from its being supposed to be 
lost when invisibly continued in 
gases, or being pretended to be re¬ 
newed by sucn fanciful powers as 
attraction, repulsion, fermentation, 
or fire; and about Time, from no 
physical effects being ascribed to the 
motions of the earth as a planet. 

Time is the sensation or percep¬ 
tion of the earth’s motions, the sensa¬ 
tions succeeding, step by step, as 
the motions proceed; and Time is 
measured by cycles of the pheno¬ 
mena, as days, moons, and years. 
In other planets, Time is measured 
by their particular motions ; and 
Time and Duration are universally 
measured by motions, and are merely I 
the sensations which accompany 
them in succession as cause and 
effect. 

Motions, changes, and phenomena 
on the earth, or any planets, ate en¬ 
tirely caused by the motions of the 
earth or planets, derived from them, 
and returned into them. Theannual 
and diurnal motions create, cause, 
include, and absorb the entire events, 
progress, and history of all organized 
beings, their motions and phenomena 
being mere deflections of the motions 
of tne planet with which they are 
connected. And the motions of the 
sun create the motions of all the 
planets. 

_ The personal and identical Sensa¬ 
tions of animals are mechanical re¬ 
sults of their whole healthful organi¬ 
zation and vitality; and reasoning 
by analogy is a necessary result of 
individual experience and education 
from imbecile infancy, essential to 
preservation, and to the beneficial 
use of the limbs, &c. a 3 proveditors 
for the contained polypus or absorb¬ 


ing stomach; every animal being ra¬ 
dically a polypus, with a body of 
compound feelers, and a medullary 
system for perception and reasoning 
by analogy, those powers being es¬ 
sential to the due use of the feelers, 
or limbs and other adjuncts to sup¬ 
ply the polypus, or stomach, with 
food, soil, excitement, or manure. 

What is called intellectuality, is a 
result of power always and essen¬ 
tially material. Power is the original 
generick perception, and the root of 
all others in species, sub-species, and 
varieties. It produces the perception 
of feeling mechanically from the 
action of masses ; and then the eyes, 
ears, nostrils, and palate economize, 
characterize, specialize, and assimi¬ 
late to the medullary system the 
actions or power of atoms, while the 
re-actions of the parts conveyed to 
the brain, or ganglions, are sensa¬ 
tions, and their reflections what we 
call perceptions. Power, or matter 
in motion, therefore, is the primary 
and immediate cause, not only of all 
physical effects on the largest scale, 
but also of all organization and assi¬ 
milation of parts, and of all medul¬ 
lary energy or mentality. The uni¬ 
verse is power displayed in and upon 
a system and systems of matter pro¬ 
ducing all phenomena,by laws arising 
from varied cross, ana reflected si¬ 
multaneous, displays of itself. 

Generick causation, or exci temen t, 
is some matter in some motion ; and 
all human or animal ideas result 
from the economization or appropri¬ 
ation of this general cause and its 
varieties by the instruments of the 
senses, which generate or create pe¬ 
culiar ideas of light and colour, sound 
and tone, taste and smell, all of them 
.varieties of feeling, which is mere 
impulse, or percussion on the nervous 
or medullary system. Nature has 
but one mode of action, varied in in¬ 
tensity ; and the varied nervous per¬ 
ceptions of that mode are created by 
the instruments of the senses, which 
uniform perceptions, as such, are ge¬ 
nerated or created by the powers of 
the sensual instruments, and consti¬ 
tute, according to this system, ani¬ 
mal experience, education, and know¬ 
ledge. 

Attraction, or the principle of action 
by which bodies are imagined mutu¬ 
ally to affect one another, so as to 





move towards each other, is, in all 
cases, an utterly impossible mode of 
action ; because each of the bodies, 
in going towards the other, requires 
to be impelled from its remote side 
where the other body is not, and 
where, of course, it is not in power. 

Every case of sensible going to¬ 
gether and sensible separation, has 
therefore some special cause, the ex¬ 
amination of which constitutes the 
knowledge of nature ; while the use 
of the terms, without the examination 
of the cause, veils knowledge in a 
circle of ignorance. 

Gravitation, as a supposed innate 
power, was noticed by the Greeks ; 
and particularly by Seneca, who 
speaks of the moon’s attracting the 
waters. Kepler enlarged upon it; 
also Fermat. After which, Dr. Hook 
published it as a system ; and it was 
subsequently adopted by Newton : 
but it is evidently of the same nature 
as witchcraft or enchantment. It is 
a presumption of a cause, without 
mechanical connexion of the cause 
with the effect. 

Repulsion, or the principle of action 
by which bodies are assumed to repel 
one another, or by their mutual action 
push each other to a greater distance, 
is universally an impossible mode of 
action; because each of the bodies, 
while moving from the other, is in 
force only in the direction in which 
it is moving, which is contrary to the 
direction of the other body. 

Bodies are accelerated by any force 
constantly acting. The velocity is 
equal to twice the distance multiplied 
by the time. The distance equal to 
the distance in one second, by the 
square of the time. And the time 
equal to the velocity, divided by twice 
the distance in a second. 

Plenum signifies space, complete¬ 
ly filled with matter ; and vacuum a 
space entirely devoid of matter. Nei¬ 
ther is probably the fact; but space 
is filled with power, i. e. by atoms, 
whose motions enable them to occupy 
every space, with power to the local 
exclusion of other matter not in 
greater power. 

All the forces of nature may be ex¬ 
plained on the principle that they are 
matter , or atoms in velocity, or are im¬ 
mediately moved by such ; and astro¬ 
nomical and chymical phenomena 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


267 


are all reducible to this simple and 

universal mechanical principle. The 
fall and weight of bodies are owing 
to their being part of a system, or 
spherical aggregation in orbicular 
and rotatory motion. The planetary 
motions arise from the radiation of a 
central force as that of the sun, in a 
medium which occupies space. The 
elastick force of gas arises from the 
atoms being in circular motions, and 
all animal force and all heat arise 
from the concentration and appro¬ 
priation of those motions. We live 
upon a world in motion, and within 
a world of atoms in motion. 

Mathematicks examine and pro¬ 
perly treat of abstract number and 
quantity ; and can legitimately be 
extended only to mechanical action 
as motion (number), and matter 
(quantity), the rectangle of these be¬ 
ing momentum. They serve also as 
symbols to illustrate. But it is gross 
sophistry to mingle mathematical 
science with any assumed powers 
not mechanical, or within the scope 
of mechanical investigation, while 
this is the ignominious practice of all 
modern physicks. 

Forces which are not supposed to 
be derived from other motions, are, 
of course, original and miraculous ; 
and such are those taught by the 
philosophy of the dark ages, called 
attraction, repulsion, gravitation, and 
the like. 

Sympathy or affection, and anti¬ 
pathy or aversion, mere mental or 
nervous phenomena, are, by a false 
analogy, allied to attraction and re¬ 
pulsion ; and to this supposed ana¬ 
logy, is owing the popular belief in 
these pretended qualities of most 
matter. 

Most natural phenomena have, for 
two centuries, been explained by 
conferring gratuitous powers on the 
natural agent corresponding in name 
with the phenomena ; but, it may be 
justly questioned, whether the agent 
is not single and simple, and whether 
the re-agents are not in most, if not 
all cases, the causes of the peculiar 
phenomena. Thus, heat is ascribed 
to heat-making atoms; bodies, going 
together, is ascribed to attraction; 
life, to a principle of life; tangent 
motion, to projectile force, &c. 

Some phenomena, whose explica- 







PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


268 _ 

tiori'is not easy, present themselves, 
and, instead of connecting them by 
due research in mechanical science, 
the powers of witchcraft are invented, 
and all nature is then mystified in¬ 
stead of being explained. 

The errour of faith, in witchcraft 
and enchantments, lay in the belief 
of causes not proximate, mechanical, 
and immediate, either by actual con¬ 
tact or material intervention. Masses 
and atoms are alike acted on me¬ 
chanically. 

When we speak of oxygen, nitro¬ 
gen, and hydrogen, we merely give 
names to various elementary powers, 
and do not precisely define. The 
words are often abused by inadver¬ 
tency. When we say that hydrogen 
fixes oxygen and generates neat, we 
do not exactly mean that the hydro¬ 
gen and oxygen of our experiments 
so combine; but that some combina¬ 
tion of some property, always allied 
to oxygen, combines with some pro¬ 
perty always allied to hydrogen. 
This property we call the principle 
of each, but from that principle our 
observations may be very remote. 
So, if oxygen and nitrogen produce 
electricity, we are not to refer to our 
oxygen and nitrogen, but to some 
ultimate fundamental principle of 
each, which nature detects. If each 
produces light and heat, these in fire 
and electricity are as different as hy¬ 
drogen and nitrogen; and the oxygen 
being common, the differences arise 
from some variance in the funda¬ 
mental principles of hydrogen, and 
nitrogen when combining with oxy¬ 
gen. In burning and flame, carbon 
is a necessary adjunct; and, in elec¬ 
tricity, it is seldom, if ever, the mere 
re-combination of oxygen and nitro¬ 
gen ; for in air there is aqueous va¬ 
pour, and different substances em¬ 
ployed as conductors ; afford different 
colours and intensities, arising, no 
doubt,from the elementary principles 
combined. We believe that oxygen, 
nitrogen, and hydrogen, are merely 
elementary atoms in different degrees 
of motion; but there may be different 
kinds of atoms in the same motion, 
or both—(but we may be wrong)— 
only the hypothesis seems to explain 
the phenomena plausibly. 

Among modern metaphysicians, 
Gassendi taught that all our ideas 
are derived from, and compounded 


of, sensations. Hobbes taught the 
same; and Locke followed them, 
superadding Reflection , or ideas de¬ 
rived from the operation of the un¬ 
derstanding, posterior to ideas derived 
from sensation. 

Leibnitz taught a pre-established 
Harmony , by which the mind con¬ 
tains general notions and truths, like 
the plant in the seed, so that, accord¬ 
ing to him, “ every thing goes on in 
the soul as if it had no body ; and in 
the body as if it had no soul.” Mal- 
branche maintained, that the com¬ 
munication between the mind and 
body was a constant miracle, arising 
from the immediate agency of the 
Deity. 

Opticism , or the doctrine that this 
is the best of all possible worlds, was 
an inference from the pre-established 
harmony , which was assumed to be 
formed by the Deity, and therefore 
perfect. Another phrase of Leibnitz 
was the law of continuity, meaning 
that motion is never lost, which, ex¬ 
tending to soul, he maintained that 
it never ceases to think even in sleep 
or in a fit. Nature, says Helvetius, 
never proceeds per saltum (never 
jumps), and the law of continuity is 
exactly preserved. 

The two great principles of Leib¬ 
nitz were, that it is impossible for a 
thing to be, and net to be, at the same 
time ; and that nothing is without a 
sufficient reason why it should be so, 
rather than otherwise. 

Descartes taught a plenum of mat¬ 
ter; and Spinoza the divine omni¬ 
presence, in that matter which he 
called the soul of the world. 

Collins taught that a man can do 
as he wills or pleases ; but that he is 
determined by his reason and his 
senses, i. e. differently from the ab¬ 
solute necessity of mechanicks or 
physicks. 

Berkeley maintained that the ex¬ 
istence of matter was purely ideal, 
and supported this by certain infer¬ 
ences of the mind during vision. 

Sir Isaac Newton avowed his ob¬ 
ject to have been, the proof of the 
existence of God, which was neces 
sary to the miraculous powers of at¬ 
traction, repulsion, gravitation, vis 
inertia, and projectile force, with 
which he clothed matter and the 




269 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


planets. He rejected the law of con¬ 
tinuity, and considered those powers 
as restoring lost motion. 

Space and Time, says Law, 
have no external representation or 
objective reality; and these ideas, as 
well as infinity and number, are 
created by powers of the mind. 

Hartley taught, and Bonnet after 
him, that the ideas were communi¬ 
cated to the mind by vibrations, as¬ 
sisted by a subtile elastick ether, 
with which the nerves are imbued. 

Helvetius ascribes the differences, 
in the minds of men and brutes, to 
bodily conformation and organiza¬ 
tion; Blumenbach, to the different 
quantities of the medullary sub¬ 
stance in the brain. Gall, to the 
parts of the brain principally de¬ 
veloped. Cuvier agrees with Blu¬ 
menbach and Helvetius. 

Mr. Hume rejects, or doubts, all 
knowledge not derived from the 
senses, i~ e. those ideas derived from 
reflection, or the operations of the 
understanding; and, to get rid of the 
causes invented by Newton, and 
which he was tola were demon¬ 
strated, he denies the assumed ne¬ 
cessary connexion of cause and 
effect. 

Dr. Reid controverts the theory 
that sensations are the only objects 
of thought, and that perceptions are 
images, or pictures in the mind, and 
conjoins innate principles as powers, 
which he calls common sense. 

Leibnitz says, a substance is a 
thing capable of action, and a com¬ 
pound substance is an aggregate of 
monads which have no parts, and 
are neither extended, figured, nor di- 
visable, lasing the real atoms of na¬ 
ture or elements of things. 

The metaphysical philosophy of 
Kant consists in six axioms:—1. 
Consciousness or egotism. 2. Time, 
the form of internal sense. 3. Space, 
of external sense. 4. Sense for in¬ 
tuition. 5. Understanding for con¬ 
ceptions ; and 6. Reason for ideas. 
Intuitions are, he says, present in 
time and space; Conceptions absent 
in time and space; Ideas, things out 
of time and space; and the three 
generate mind. He then asserts, 
that time and space are in the mind, 
and are the receptivities of sense. I 
W 2 


Understanding he refers to the four 

categories of quantity, quality, rela¬ 
tion, and mode; and their species, 
unity; Many, the whole; Existence, 
negation, size; Property and Acci¬ 
dents, cause and effect, action and 
reaction; Possibility, certainty, ne¬ 
cessity. Reason, he founds on the 
categories in their absolute sense, as 
totality, limitation, substance, cause, 
concurrence, necessity. 

Philosophy is divided, by Kant, in¬ 
to Physicks, Ethicks, and Logick. 
The two former are material sci¬ 
ences, which take cognizance of ex¬ 
ternal or internal facts; whereas the 
latter is purely formal , and treats 
only of the form and connexion of 
our thoughts. 

Sense is the faculty which receives 
the matter of all the phenomena of 
nature; it is therefore passive, and 
has only two modes or forms of re¬ 
ceiving. It consists therefore of the 
two receptivities, time and space. 

Reason is a faculty that acts quite 
independently of time and space, by 
its six pure activities , which are the 
Six Ideas—Absolute Totality; Ab¬ 
solute Limitation; Absolute Sub¬ 
stance ; Absolute Necessity ; Abso¬ 
lute Cause; Absolute Concurrence. 

Mathematicks is the science of 
the laws of the Sensitive Faculty , 
or of the two mental receptivities, 
Time and Space. 

Metaphysicks is a pure rational 
science that contemplates the ra¬ 
tional grounds of all that presents 
itself to the mind. Hence we have 
metaphysicks of nature, or the sci¬ 
ences of ontology and cosmology ; 
and metaphysicks of morals or the 
sciences of psychology and theology. 

Philosophy investigates the facul¬ 
ties of Sense, Understanding, and 
Reason, and their results, Intuition , 
Conception , and Idea , together with 
their application. Intuition, present 
in Time and Space. Conception, 
absent in Time and Space. Idea, 
out of Time and Space. 

An Intuition is everything present 
in Time and Space, that w r e feel, see, 
hear, taste, or smell. 

A Conception is every thing ab¬ 
sent in Time and Space, that we 
think of only, but do not touch 






270 


PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


An Idea is every thing out o/Time 
and Space that we think of only, but 
which can never come into Time 
and Space. 

This philosophy teaches that we 
have knowledge h priori which is 
both universal and necessary, and is 
therefore not derived from experi¬ 
ence ; that objects are only given to 
us by the united operations of sense 
and understanding, and that reason 
itself has the power to generate pure 
knowledge h prion. The object of 
the “ Critick of pure Reason” being 
to establish that we have syntheti¬ 
cal judgements a priori. 

Of all the matter that is given to 
the mind, it is impossible to meet 
with any that is not contained in the 
two receptacles Time and Space. 
Therefore Time and Space contain 
the sum and substance of all our 
knowledge, and Time and Space 
themselves exist in the mind, for as 
knowledge really does exist in the 
mind, that which contains it must 
be in the mind also; hence Time and 
Space, say the Kantesians, are in 
the mind. 

Mr. Locke ascribes the alleged in¬ 
feriority of the reasoning powers of 
brutes to their inability of abstract¬ 
ing or making general ideas ; but 
other writers doubt whether men 
ever make such; and most of them 
admit that all animals reason by 
analogy, because old ones are more 
sagacious than young ones, and be¬ 
cause few of them incur a second 
time a danger they have once ex¬ 
perienced. What are called habits 
and instincts, appear to arise from 
construction and capability, produc¬ 
ing resulting practices, which the ex¬ 
perience of generations proves to be 
the most fit and convenient to their 
power and natural constitution. 

Locke’s doctrine, that we have no 
innate ideas, and that all our ideas 
are compounded of sensations, was 
previously taught by Gassendi and 
Hobbes. “External objects,” says 
Mr. Locke, “furnish the mind with 
the ideas of sensible qualities; and 
the mind furnishes the understand¬ 
ing with ideas of its own opera¬ 
tions.” 

Logicians teach five rules of con¬ 
ception, or perfect reflection, as fol¬ 
lows :— 


1. Conceive of things clearly and 
distinctly in their own natures. 

2. Conceive of things completely 
in all their parts. 

3. Conceive of things comprehen¬ 
sively in all their properties and re¬ 
lations. 

4. Conceive of things extensively 
in all their kinds. 

5. Conceive of things orderly , or 
in a correct method. 

Hence every perfect idea includes 
clearness, completeness, comprehen¬ 
siveness, extent, and system or or¬ 
der. 

Astrology is an errour, because it 
connects certainties with mere pro¬ 
babilities ; but not such an errour, as 
very ignorant though popular writers 
would make it. For example, no 
astrologer views the heavens in 
making predictions; but merely con¬ 
sults an ephemeris, for it seldom 
happens that half the planets are 
above the horizon, and, if so, no 
eye could fix their positions. Nor is 
the erection of a horoscope of the 
twelve houses, or equal divisions, an 
affair of calculation, but it is formed 
in a few minutes. Only the slightest 
knowledge of addition and substrac- 
tion is required, and the pompous 
nonsense in books and novels 
proves* to demonstration, that the 
art practised by these writers of con¬ 
necting words and paragraphs is al¬ 
together distinct from knowledge of 
their subjects. 

Astrology, prophecy, &c. imply 
fate; but the mistake arises from 
this principle, that all possible events 
are within a certain probability. If, 
then, 100 events are foretold with 
various probabilities of coming to 
pass, a certain number, as half, a 
third, or two-thirds, must always 
happen as foretold; and however or 
by whatever means foretold. The 
means merely relieve the prophet from 
the palpable imposture of inventing 
his prognosticks. One means are as 
good as another for this deception 
on the understanding; and whether 
100 probable events are foretold by 
the sediments of tea-cups, planets, 
entrails of birds, shuffling of cards, 
dreams, pricking in a book, or moles 
on the body, some 30, 40, 50, or 60, 

, are equally likely to come to pass. 





PHILOSOPHY, &c. 


There are two species of necessity 
often confounded and mingled, phy¬ 
sical and moral, but really distinct. 
The laws of nature are imperative, 
and hence the government of physi¬ 
cal necessity ; But the moral, social, 
and personal relations of man are 
indifferent to nature, and therefore 
perfectly free. 

It is proper to distinguish between 
facts or certainty, and what is called 
fate. A thing is what it is, and is 
not another thing. This is a mere 
fact. An event happens one way, 
and not two ways. This also is"a 
mere fact, and nothing but the mere 
fact. But the causes, or actions and 
reactions, are independent of each 
other, and various in kind; and 
therefore the production, or event, is 
distinct from any of the preceding 
causes taken separately, while each 
of them are independent of the others. 
To constitute fate or destiny, the 
causes which go before the result 
must be as necessary as it, and con¬ 
curring for that special purpose. 
There is a general certainty that 
there must always be some result; 
but some result is not a special re¬ 
sult, which, therefore, is not neces¬ 
sary. 

In animal actions, the judgement, 
decision, and action depend on the 
fluctuating and variable experience 
of the animal, as a selfish individu¬ 
ality or microcosm, and therefore no 
animal decisions or actions are ne¬ 
cessary. 

The final cause of animal exist¬ 
ence in such variety and numbers, 
is their reciprocal use to each other 
in fructifying the soil, and adding to 
the natural food in vegetation. This 
they effect by respiration, and by 
chymical decompositions in the la¬ 
boratory of their bodies. Without 
their excrements and remains, the 
soil would become arid, and all the 
pabulums of vegetation would be 
volatilized and dispersed. Hence, 
nature peoples every leaf, flower, 
stem, and pore, and the end is effect¬ 
ed by the countless multitudes. 
They manure the soil, sustain vege¬ 
tation, and, in return, vegetation 
sustains them. It is a circle of ex¬ 
istence, in which each part and every 
link is useful and necessary. The 
manure of insects and animals con¬ 


_271 

verts soil into vegetables, and these 

again sustain animalization. 

When water is raised into steam, 
we see, by the microscope, small 
spheres like bubbles formed; and this 
is always the form which aqueous 
vapour assumes while evolving from 
its mass of fluid. It is therefore to 
be suspected, that these spheres con¬ 
sist of atoms in various excitement 
of rotation, like the atoms which form 
the surface of a planet. They are 
products of the excitement which 
produced the evaporation, and then 
this excitement being motion, any 
cold body, or medium, takes off the 
motion of these little spheres, and 
they then fall together in drops. This 
seems to be an analogy by which 
we may infer the structure of all 
gases. It is difficult to conceive the 
orbits of simple atoms, and in this 
way, as spheres, all may work to¬ 
gether, and the different parts of 
these spheres may, in power, consti¬ 
tute what we call elements. The 
equatorial parts the more active, and 
the polar the more sluggish. The 
oxygen of the atmosphere may be in 
equatorial activity, and the nitrogen 
in relative inertness. 

The perception of objects is made 
by impressions on the intermediate 
senses; but strong recollections often 
reverse the process, and perception 
creates on the sense an impression 
equivalent to the usual external ac¬ 
tion. Often, too, the senses become 
diseased and perceptions arise from 
the disease and excitement of the 
sense. These are, and have been, 
the causes of all those mistakes and 
illusions which ignorance and super¬ 
stition have ascribed to supernatural 
agency. Hence all the ghosts, vi¬ 
sions, knockings, &c. &c. when not 
frauds and falsehoods. 

In physiognomy a habit of mind 
begets a cast of features, by which 
the mind may often be inferred. So 
the development of parts of the brain 
enlarges the power of those parts, if 
opportunities favour, and some gene¬ 
ral deductions may be made; but not 
with the precision assumed by phre¬ 
nology or craniology. 

That perception, memory, volition, 
and all the mental phenomena, are 
in some way associated or dependant 
for their healthy action on the brain, 
cannot be for a moment questioned. 






272 


POLITICAL ECONOMY. 


Herman Goltz passed many years 
in anatomical examination of that 
delicate viscus, the dead brain, endea¬ 
vouring to discover some coincidence 
between its marvellous structure and 
its important uses. To this end, the 
whole concentrated force of his acute 
intellect was directed. Sometimes 
he was elevated by the hope that he 
had ascertained the source of the 
reasoning faculty, and the seat in 
which the passions are generated; 
but'these gleams of success were 
transient, and were succeeded by 
total obscurity. At one period, he 
conceived that he had actually drawn 
aside the curtain, and beheld the 
mysterious processes that are per¬ 
formed in the occult laboratory of 
n a rare ; but he confessed himself de¬ 
ceived, and afterwards cordially ac¬ 
knowledged that the curtain itself 
was a mere delusion. Exhausted by 
these sudden alternations of hope and 
disappointment, the fabrick of his 
understanding gave way, and, in a 
moment of despair, he hanged him¬ 
self in his dissecting-room, and was 
nearly devoured by the rats before 
his loss was discovered and his fate 
deplored. Before he accomplished 
his last resolve, he wrote on a slip of 
paper these impressive words : “ For 
more than twenty tedious years I 
have pursued a phantom, an ignis 
fatuus, that has decoyed me into 
ruin and misery. My vision has be¬ 
come so dim, that I can no longer 
distinguish the objects of my re¬ 
search ; my hand.is too tremulous to 
hold the scalpel. Confined in this 
charnel-house, I have been estranged 
from nature’s fair and inviting pro¬ 
spects ; I have cultivated no man’s 
friendship, nor sought for the affec¬ 
tion of woman. I nave indeed read 
of the charms of society, the exhila¬ 
rations of wine, the delight of a do- 
mestick partner, and the blessedness 
of children : but I have been a soli¬ 
tary student; water has been my 
only beverage; no females can re¬ 
proach me with professions, nor can 
a'child curse me for existence. To 
live longer is useless; the past has 
been misemployed; the present is 
wearisome, and I will anticipate the 
future.” 

The notion we annex to the words, 
matter and mind, says Stuart, is 
merely relative. If I am asked, what 


I mean by matter, I can only explain 
myself by saying, it is that which is 
extended, figured, coloured, move- 
able, hard, soft, rough and smooth, 
hot or cold; that is, I can define it 
in no other way, than by enumerating 
its sensible qualities. It is not mat¬ 
ter or body which I perceive by my 
senses, but only extension, figure, 
colpur, and certain other qualities, 
which the constitution of my nature 
leads me to refer to something which 
is extended, figured, and coloured. 
The case is precisely similar with 
respect to mind. We are not imme¬ 
diately conscious of its existence, but 
we are conscious of sensation, 
thought, volition—operations which 
imply the existence of something 
which feels, thinks, wills, &c. 


POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

Political Economy is a specula¬ 
tive science, whose data are often 
vague, and conclusions subject to the 
errours of system. When founded 
on arithmetick its reasonings do not 
in general apply to society, which is 
a compound of facts, affections, and 
passions, not to be controlled by the 
despotism of figures; while the mul¬ 
tiplied relations of society constantly 
baffle isolated considerations. Ne¬ 
vertheless, it has corrected some er¬ 
rours, and established a few truths 
amidst a greater number of absurd 
and mischievous dogmas.—Some of 
its more popular truths are the fol¬ 
lowing :— 

That national wealth does not con¬ 
sist in mere money or coin. 

That what one nation gains by 
commerce or manufactures* another 
does not lose. 

That national superiority does not 
depend on repressing the industry, 
and impoverishing the resources of 
other nations. 

That it is not better to make at 
home every thing we want, rather 
than permit other nations to prcfi 
by selling to us. 

That national prosperity is not to 
be judged of by the balances of trade, 
as represented by custom-house en¬ 
tries. 

That statesmen and legislators do 
not know better how to direct th 
various branches of industry, and the 





_ POLITICA L 

employment of capital, than the in¬ 
dividuals who draw their subsistence 
from them. 

That commerce and manufactures 
cannot be aided by artificial restric¬ 
tions, limitations, and modes of tax¬ 
ation. 

That no country can be enriched 
by compelling the people to pur¬ 
chase, during an indefinite length of 
time, inferiour commodities at exor¬ 
bitant prices. 

That capitals cannot be changed 
in their direction, and forced by go¬ 
vernmental regulations out of their 
habitual channels, without injury to 
individuals, and disadvantage to na¬ 
tional wealth. 

That population is not always and 
by all means to be encouraged. 

That luxury and profuse expendi¬ 
ture, by encouraging industry, are 
not beneficial to a country ; and fru¬ 
gality the reverse. 

That taxes impoverish a nation, 
though spent at home. 

That high taxes are injurious, 
though they urge to great exertion; 
and, though spent at home, do not 
foster industry. 

That governmental expenditure 
does not operate merely like taking 
money out of one hand to put into 
the other. 

That a national debt is a national 
curse; and paper money synonymous 
with destitution. 

That colonies are not advantage¬ 
ous to the mother-country, owing to 
any monopoly they afford. 

That chartered companies, exclu¬ 
sive privileges, and monopolies, are 
injurious institutions, in regard to 
commerce and manufactures. 

That national splendour is no sure 
sign of national wealth and national 
happiness. 

That the prosperity and increasing 
riches of manufacturers is not the 
same thing as national prosperity. 

That we should not make laws to 
increase the wealth and influence of 
great capitalists, and put the poor who 
work for them more completely un¬ 
der their subjection. 

We ought not so to frame a na¬ 
tional system, as to make the rich 
richer, and the poor poorer. 

"That it is expedient to allow an 
industrious man to purchase the arti¬ 
cles he stands in need of, at the best 
market, and the cheapest rate. 


ECONOMY.__273 

That laws ought to operate with 
equal advantage to all classes of the 
community, and protect all classes 
equally. 

That restrictions, high duties, and 
prohibitions on imported goods, do 
not render domestick manufactures 
cheap. 

That restrictions, high duties, and 
prohibitions are not necessary to 
furnish employment for our people at 
home: agriculture and commerce, 
and the trades connected, being ade¬ 
quate for that purpose. 

The best patriots are the advocates 
for free trade, and free ports among 
all the nations of the earth. 

The first book of the modern prin¬ 
ciples of political economy, was the 
treatise of Sir Dudley North, in 1691, 
entitled “ Discourses on Trade, prin¬ 
cipally directed to the cases of inte¬ 
rest, coinage, clipping, and increase 
of money.” Nothing of importance 
appeared in England from that time 
till the publication of Sir James 
Steuart’s Principles of Political Eco¬ 
nomy, about the year 1768, which 
was completely superseded by Dr. 
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, in 
1776. Political Economy was first 
treated as a science by the French 
“ Economistsat the head of whom 
was Dr. Francois Quesnay, Physi¬ 
cian to Louis XIY.; who was born 
in 1694, and died at Versailles in 
1774, at the age of 80. In 1758 he 
published his Tableau Economique, 
et Maximes Generates du Gouverne- 
ment Economique. 

Dr. Quesnay was followed in the 
same career, by the Marquis Mira- 
beau the elder, M. Merciere de la Ri¬ 
viere, M. Dupont Nemours, M. Tur¬ 
got, and his biographer Condorcet.— 
They did much to introduce the ge¬ 
nuine principles of free trade, and the 
liberal notions that characterize the 
modern science of Political Econo¬ 
my. From this time to the publica¬ 
tion of Dr. Adam Smith’s Wealth of 
Nations, in 1776, nothing appears to 
have been done worth detailed notice 
in addition to the labours of the Eco¬ 
nomists. 

The next step in the advancement 
of this science, was the Essay on 
the principle of Population of Mr. 
Malthus. The intent of this Essay 
was to show that population de’- 






274 


POLITICAL ECONOMY". 


pends on subsistence; men and wo¬ 
men cannot be raised unless they 
have food to eat. 2. That plenty of 
food increases population, by ena¬ 
bling marriages to take place, and 
children to be raised. All this had 
been observed before by M. Herbert 
n his Essai sur la Police des Grains, 
1755; by Mr. Wallace in his treatise 
on the numbers of mankind; by 
Dr. Darwin in his Botanick Garden; 
and by Mr. Townsend in his Disser¬ 
tation on the Poor Laws, 1786. 

The works of M. Storch, of Pe- 
tersburgh; ofM. Ganilh; of M. Sis- 
mondi; but above all of M. Say, 
have contributed to throw light on 
this science, among the S^avans of 
the continent. 

In Great Britain, during this pe¬ 
riod, the most important work pub¬ 
lished, was “ The Principles of Po¬ 
litical Economy and Taxation,” by 
Mr. Ricardo, 1817. 

The positions thus laid down by 
Mr. Ricardo, have been followed by 
Messrs. M’Cullock and Mill; and 
constitute the difference between the 
old school of Dr. Adam Smith, and 
the new school, of which these 
writers seem to be at the head. 

Political Economy then treats of 
the sources, the production, the dis¬ 
tribution, the accumulation, and the 
consumption of national wealth: the 
effect of those institutions on society 
which are immediately connected 
with the increase or diminution of 
national wealth: and the effects pro¬ 
duced on society itself by its increase 
or diminution- The end and object 
of this branch of knowledge, is to 
show in what manner, and by what 
means, the physical gratification of 
human wants can be most equitably, 
conveniently, certainly, and effectu¬ 
ally distributed among all the classes 
of society. 

Wealth is a plentiful possession 
of those material objects on which 
exchangeable value has been con¬ 
ferred by human skill and labour— 
which are desired for the gratification 
of human wants—and which cannot 
be obtained by those who seek them, 
but by giving some other object in 
return, equally desirable to him who 
receives it. The wealth of an indi¬ 
vidual, or a nation, consists in the 
abundance and cheapness of those 


articles which are useful or desirable 
for the gratification of human wants. 
Hence wealth may increase where 
price diminishes. I can afford to lay 
out five dollars in silk stockings at 
the present price: let the price or ex¬ 
changeable value be reduced one 
half: then one half of five dollars 
will answer to me an equal purpose. 

Riches is a word synonymous with 
wealth. The last expression (wealth) 
being gradually adopted by writers 
on political economy in our own lan¬ 
guage, I have used it also. The 
French use the word Richesse; 
meaning, as we do, plenty of what¬ 
ever is desirable to man on account 
of its yielding pleasure, or contri¬ 
buting to our comforts, or necessi¬ 
ties. ' . . 

Sources of Wealth. —Labour em¬ 
ployed in conferring on a raw mate 
rial some property or quality that 
renders it desirable. Skill and capi¬ 
tal are usually necessary for this pur¬ 
pose ; but these, by ultimate analy¬ 
sis, are resolvable into labour. 

Labour. —Human exertion em 
ployed to produce or confer some de • 
sirable quality or property (that is, 
exchangeable value,) on some raw 
material. Hence labour is the main 
or rather the only source of wealth. 
Labour is, for the most part, hired 
and exerted for the sake of the wages 
or remuneration paid by the em¬ 
ployer. When we speak of labour, 
we usually refer to the mere bodily 
exertion of a day-labourer, exclusive 
of acquired skill. Political Economy 
itself may be considered as that sci¬ 
ence which determines the circum¬ 
stances that influence the productive 
power of human labour, and the dis¬ 
tribution of the proceeds. 

Wages. —That portion of the mo¬ 
ney-value of the commodity pro¬ 
duced, which the labourer receives 
as his compensation: in other words, 
the money or other useful commodity 
given as a compensation to the la¬ 
bourer for his labour. This must be 
so much as to ensure to the labourer 
and a moderate family, a portion of 
the necessaries of life, sufficient to 
sustain bodily strength. Hence, ail 
taxes on the necessaries of life either 
enhance wages, or reduce the ‘la¬ 
bourer to want. Wages are higher 
when combined with skill, which is 
acquired by previous labour and msy 







_ POLITICAL 

in fact be considered as capital. 

Thus the wages of a painter or sculp¬ 
tor are far greater than those of the 
weaver of the canvass, or the digger 
in the quarry. 

Value. —Utility, real or fancied, 
conferred by skill, labour, and capi¬ 
tal. Thus, a piece of glass made into 
spectacles, has real utility conferred 
on it; a piece of glass cut in imita¬ 
tion of a diamond, has fancied utility 
conferred upon it. In both cases ex¬ 
changeable value—that is; some de¬ 
sirable quality has been artificially 
conferred on the rough and worthless 
material. 

Productive Labour or Industry. 
—That which confers exchangeable 
value on any material object, which 
it did not possess before ; or which 
confers skill and knowledge, which 
can be used in conferring value ; or 
which are in themselves valuable and 
saleable, as the knowledge of a law¬ 
yer or an engineer. 

Unproductive Labour or Indus¬ 
try. —That which is expended with¬ 
out producing value, or contributing 
to produce it. 

Production.— The formation of 
any thing desirable, or that consti¬ 
tutes wealth. It is the result of la¬ 
bour. 

Produce. —The effect of productive 
industry employed upon the soil or 
land. 

Product. —The effect of productive 
industry employed in rendering any 
material substance valuable. Nearly 
synonymous with the popular word 
“Commodity.” A product general¬ 
ly depends on the productive agency 
of nature, of skill, labour, and capi¬ 
tal. It is for the most part the com¬ 
bined result of these. Thus, in a 
steam-engine, the skill, labour, and 
capital are employed to render the 
natural agents fire and water pro¬ 
ductive. 

Land. —Includes soil, waters, fish¬ 
eries, vegetables, rocks, mines, and 
minerals. Land supplies raw mate¬ 
rial and food. 

Productive Agency of Nature, 
then, is the useful effect of natural 
agents, whether guided or not by 
human industry: as the Sun, the 
Rain, the Soil, in Agriculture; as 
Wind in a Windmill, in a Ship, in a 


ECONOMY. _273 

winnowing machine ; Water in a 
dam; Heat in a furnace, steam, &c. 

Ingredients of Value.— Cost of 
the raw material, which is sometimes 
paid in the form of rent: as for brick- 
earth near a metropolis like London; 
for land containing porcelain clay : 
for a marble quarry; for ozier swamps 
on river banks, to make baskets ; for 
a quarry of burr-stone, for a mine, 
&c. The intrinsick value of raw 
material before any labour is bestow¬ 
ed upon it, depends on its plenty or 
scarcity, or the difficulty or facility 
with which it can be procured, and 
its capability of receiving value by 
means of skill, labour, and capital 
employed upon it. A handful of mud 
is of no value ; a handful of raw dia¬ 
monds may be of great value. The 
next ingredient of value, is wages of 
the labourer (that is labour) employ¬ 
ed in producing and conferring value 
on this raw material; then the pro¬ 
fits of the capital necessarily expend¬ 
ed in purchasing the raw material, 
paying the wages, furnishing the 
tools and implements, &c. This also 
is reducible to labour. 

Measure of Value.— The actual 
practical measure of value, is, the 
average money-price of the article in 
question, at the given time and place; 
and it is the average, because the 
money-market, or current price, will 
be sometimes a little higher, some¬ 
times a little lower than the natural 
price, owing to temporary fluctua¬ 
tions in demand and supply. It is 
reducible to the quantity of labour 
the article can command. Money 
is the representative ultimately of la¬ 
bour. 

Price.— The amount of other pro¬ 
ducts which any useful article will 
command in exchange. This is ex¬ 
changeable value. The elements of 
price may be considered as being 
wages and profits; whether rent or 
the cost of raw material ever enters 
into the calculation of price is doubt¬ 
ed by some. In agricultural produce • 
it certainly does not. In some cases, 
where the raw material is scarce and 
dear, I think it does. 

Money Price, Market Price, 
Current Price.— The amount in 
current money which any useful or 
desirable article will command when 
exposed to sale. This depends per¬ 
manently on the natural price, and 





276 


POLITICAL ECONOMY. 


occasionally on the demand com¬ 
pared with the supply* Market price 
is the price for the time being. 

Real Price, Natural Price, con¬ 
sists in the cost (if any) of the raw 
material, the amount paid in wages 
for the labour expended upon the ar¬ 
ticle, and the usual profit on the ca¬ 
pital employed upon it; all reducible 
to the labour expended upon it before 
it be fit for market. It is that price 
which will enable the seller to re- 

roduce the article in the same mar- 

et, with a reasonable profit. If this 
cannot be obtained, supply ceases. 
Prime cost will be this natural price, 
deducting the profit on the capital 
employed. 

Social Price. —The price that 
commodities bring when influenced 
by restrictions, monopolies, taxes, 
and legislative regulations. Thus, 
the natural price of a bushel of wheat 
or the amount of labour necessary to 
grow it and bring it to market, is one 
thing ; the price of the same wheat 
influenced by the corn laws of Great 
Britain, is one half more. This last 
is the social price. 

Glut. —Over production : so that 
the market price falls below the na¬ 
tural price. A glut may be of a single 
commodity, or of a great number. 11 
may be of longer or shorter continu¬ 
ance. In England, for some years, 
it has been so extensive and conti¬ 
nued, as to be almost general, owing 
probably to the immensely produc¬ 
tive power of machinery, and the 
unequal distribution of wealth. 

Raw Material. —Any material 
object employed to receive value, or 
to have utility conferred upon it by 
human industry, skill and capital. 
It has, therefore, a natural value de¬ 
pendant on its capability of receiving 
artificial value. 

Commodities. —All articles pos¬ 
sessing exchangeable value, and 
commanding price. 

Exchangeable Value. —That pro¬ 
perty conferred on any raw material, 
by means of human skill, labour, 
and capital employed upon it, that 
makes it so desirable as to induce 
other persons to give for it some 
other valuable article or commodity- 
in exchange. Human skill and la¬ 
bour therefore are Droductively ex¬ 


pended, not in producing the com¬ 
modity or article itself, but the useful 
or fashionable property which makes 
it desirable and sought for by others 
—producing and conferring that va¬ 
lue which causes the commodity to 
be in demand. Useful articles that 
nature has provided in abundance, 
such as air, water, fire, light, have 
no exchangeable value in tneir natu¬ 
ral state; any person may without 
price obtain as much of them as he 
need. The exchangeable value of 
an article increases with the quantity 
of skill, labour, and capital necessa¬ 
rily employed in producing it. This 
value then consists in the power of 
purchasing other goods, conferred 
by its possession. 

Revenue, Income. —The annual 
amount of money or other valuable 
commodities which a man is entitled 
to, or receives, whether as landholder 
in the form of rent—as agriculturist, 
manufacturer, or merchant in the 
form of profit—as a member of one 
of the learned professions in the form 
of fees—or as a magistrate or pub- 
lick officer in the form of salary—or 
in any other lawful way. 

Expenditure. —That portion of a 
man’s revenue which he lays out or 
expends for the gratification of his 
immediate wants : and which being 
consumed, produces no further profit 
or advantage than the gratification 
of his wants. This expenditure may 
be prudent or necessary, according 
to his situation in life; but he is 
nevertheless poorer in proportion. 

Consumption. —Produce may be 
eaten up, worn out, destroyed, con¬ 
sumed, for the personal gratification 
of the possessor, without view to 
future profit. In this sense it is 
synonymous with expenditure as 
above explained: and is unproduc¬ 
tive ; as the wines on a rich man’s 
table. 

But it may be eaten up, worn out, 
destroyed, consumed, for the pur¬ 
pose of maintaining labourers, build¬ 
ings, tools, machinery, &c. with a 
view to future profit: this is pro¬ 
ductive consumption. Productively 
or unproductively, whatever is pro¬ 
duced is consumed on an average, 
in about a year. Governments are 
great consumers, and usually with 
enormous waste. 




277 


POLITICAL ECONOMY. 


Capital— That portion of a man’s 
revenue which remains as a surplus 
or saving after all his expenditures 
are made. A surplus which may be 
laid out to produce further profit or 
additional revenue. 

Circulating Capital.—A popular 
phrase in use to express that mass of 
revenue, whether belonging to indi¬ 
viduals or to the government of a 
nation, which is laid out and ex¬ 
pended in commodities wanted, whe¬ 
ther for immediate consumption or 
future profit; whether destroyed and 
consumed in the form of present ex¬ 
penditure, or destined to form a part 
of accumulated capital, as the basis 
and source of future additional in¬ 
come. Circulating capital must not 
be confounded with circulating me¬ 
dium, which last consists of the gold 
and silver coin, and paper money of a 
country; and serves no other pur¬ 
pose than to facilitate, by means of a 
common standard of reference, the 
interchanges and barterings of the 
circulating capital, which is of far 
greater moment and amount. 

Wealth is a relative term, for as 
there is only a certain amount of 
property in a country, so the posses¬ 
sion of a large share by one man is 
the poverty of others. The wealth 
of individuals is therefore no benefit 
to the country, while as to others it 
is the cause of their poverty. If all 
the property in a country is worth a 
million, and one man has half a 
million, there remains but half a 
million for all others, and if nine or 
ten possess nine-tenths the rest 
would be poor. This principle of 
accumulation, the curse of advanc¬ 
ing, or old, society, is favoured by 
the substitution of money for barter; 
since goods could not be accumu¬ 
lated like money, and money is 
therefore properly denounced as the 
root of all evil, and it is declared 
that no rich man can enter the king¬ 
dom of heaven. To correct these 
mischiefs, the inducements to accu¬ 
mulate should be diminished by fix¬ 
ing a very low rate of interest for 
money in comparison with the wages 
of labour or the profits of industry. 
Money, as an artificial convenience, 
ought not to be allowed to be ab¬ 
stracted, and usurers should be sys¬ 
tematically discouraged, for the 
general benefit of the whole commu¬ 


nity. Interest of money is the sla¬ 

very of the borrower to the lender, 
and there ought to be as few slaves 
as possible, while the slavery which 
exists ought to be of the slightest 
kind. 

Fixed Capital consists of the 
workshops, warehouses, buildings, 
tools, and other conveniences neces¬ 
sary to produce future profit by 
means of the capital thus invested 
in them. These, in mercantile and 
manufacturing language, constitute 
the plant of a merchant or manufac¬ 
turer. The stables, the barn, the 
granary, the sheds, the carts, the 
wagons, ploughs, harrows, and 
other implements of husbandry, the 
horses, cattle, &c. of a farmer con¬ 
stitute his plant or fixed capital. 
Plant is a metaphorical term, as if a 
man w*ere planted and rooted where 
his fortune is to be made and grow. 

Stock, produce of accumulated la¬ 
bour, kept for the purpose of being 
employed with a view to further 
profit. 

Profit is not the excess which a 
man receives for any saleable com¬ 
modity beyond the real or natural 
price which includes profit, but the 
return in value which he receives for 
laying out and managing or super¬ 
intending his capital. When a man 
brings to market an article possess¬ 
ing exchangeable value, it has' al¬ 
ready cost him the price of the raw 
material, the amount of wages em¬ 
ployed upon it (greater in proportion 
to the skill required) and the legal 
interest of the capital employed upon 
it. This is the prime cost. To this 
he adds the usual profit upon his 
capital. The usual rale of profit in 
a country regulates the profit in par¬ 
ticular cases. This usual rate of 
profit is principally regulated by the 
profit of agriculture, tne earliest and 
most common of all employments, 
but attended with the minimum of 
profit. 

Rent is the price paid to a land- 
owner, for the loan of capital in the 
form of land, of houses, warehouses, 
water-power, machinery, &c. Clear 
rent is that which remains to him, 
after deducting interest of capital, 
expenses, and all out-goings. Rent 
is lower than profit; because the re¬ 
ceiver of rent is put to no trouble, is 
called upon for no skill, and incurs 






278 


POLITICAL ECONOMY". 


no risk. At least, this the case 
where rent is paid in money. Those 
who embark capital, as agricul¬ 
turists, merchants, or manufacturers, 
must employ their capital, under the 
direction of technical skill, previ¬ 
ously and laboriously acquired; and 
they generally incur some risk of 
losing their profit, either from want 
of demand for the article, or insol¬ 
vency in some of the purchasers. 

Interest is the rent or compensa¬ 
tion paid for the use of capital, gene¬ 
rally of capital in the form of money 
loaned to some person, who, by the 
addition of technical skill, wishes to 
make profit of the capital loaned. 
As interest, like rent, is received with¬ 
out any trouble or risk incurred by 
the lender, it is always much less 
than profit. Generally, the average 
profit or capital in any country Is 
three times the amount of the usual 
rate of interest, w T here business is 
transacted by wholesale. 

Productive Expenditure. —Capi¬ 
tal saved out of revenue, and em¬ 
ployed with a view of profit. 

Unproductive Expenditure.— 
That which is expended on articles 
that are consumed without any view 
to profit in consuming them : as in 
food, clothes, wine, amusements, &c 
It does not however follow, be¬ 
cause expenditure takes place with¬ 
out any thing of value remaining, 
that it is useless. Useful expendi¬ 
ture is one thing, productive ex¬ 
penditure is another. It may be use¬ 
ful as the nourishment necessary 
to life. Still, not being so applied as 
to produce future profit, it is properly 
termed unproductive. 

Unproductive Class. —Those 
members of society who do not la¬ 
bour in any manner, or whose labour 
may well be dispensed with, as con¬ 
tributing little or nothing to the gra¬ 
tification of those human wants in 
which it is innocent and desirable to 
indulge. 

Money. —Some article or commo¬ 
dity, real or imaginary, employed to 
supersede the necessity of bartering 
or exchanging for each other, the in¬ 
numerable variety of commodities 
that are demanded and supplied. So 
that every article may be valued in 
reference to some common standard 
of exchange, some common measure 


of value, which should, if possible, be 
devoid of value itself, except for this 
use to which it is applied. In some 
parts of Africa, the money consists 
of the shells called cowries; in other 
parts, of bars of iron. Most civilized 
countries have adopted the precious 
metals (gold and silver) as having 
an intrinsick value which fluctuates 
very little ; for a common measure 
to be perfect, should be either of no 
value or of a value not subject to 
change. No known material pos¬ 
sesses all the necessary qualities; 
the precious metals approach only 
to what we want. 

Money, therefore, (whether coined 
money or paper money) has or 
should have no value itself: it is the 
unit or standard to which values are 
referred. It is the representative and 
exponent of wealth; it does not con¬ 
stitute wealth. A certain quantity 
in every country is necessary in pro¬ 
portion to the business carried on, 
to serve as a circulating medium, by 
means of which exchanges are cal¬ 
culated and facilitated. But beyond 
this employment of money its ac¬ 
cumulation is useless; or rather de¬ 
trimental. For if it be more abun¬ 
dant than the demands of commerce 
for circulating medium require, the 
money price of every article rises in 
proportion, foreign commerce is im¬ 
peded, and the coin is sent off to 
countries where it bears a higher 
price. Money coined out of gold and 
silver has, within 25 or 30 years, 
been gradually superseded in great 
part by paper money; whether ad¬ 
vantageously or not, all circumstan¬ 
ces considered, is a question of doubt 
and limitation. 

Bullion (gold and silver uncoined.) 
—These, when manufactured, have 
value as articles of commerce; for 
convenience and ornament inde¬ 
pendent of their use in coin. This 
value, as a useful and ornamental 
material, frequently occasions the 
market value of bullion to fluctuate-; 
and operates as a considerable dis¬ 
advantage in the use of these metals 
for coin. In the early stages of so¬ 
ciety) gold and silver being frequent¬ 
ly found in a metallick form, were 
in greater plenty than iron and 
other metals, which required to be 
extracted by a long and difficult pro¬ 
cess from tne ore. We see this in 






POLITICAL ECONOMY. 


279 


Homer’s Iliad. The value of gold 

and silver, depending on tneir 
scarcity, ana on the amount of la¬ 
bour necessarily expended in pro¬ 
curing them, fell greatly soon after 
the discovery and intercourse with 
Spanish America. 

Circulating Medium. —Any kind 
of money, any common standard of 
measure or value, whether of me- 
tallick coin or paper, that passes 
currently in payment for commodi¬ 
ties that are in demand. Currency 
is the same with circulating medium. 

Bank. —The circulating medium, 
currency, or coin of Europe, until 
about the middle of the last century, 
consisted chiefly of coin manufac¬ 
tured out of bullion: every country 
having its own coin, that served as 
a measure of value for all its domes- 
tick transactions, but was seldom 
employed out of the country. Abroad, 
coin passed, as it now does, only as 
bullion of a given weight and fine¬ 
ness ; and therefore a loss was often 
suffered on remitting it to foreign 
parts, beside the risk and expense of 
transmission. Hence arose the sub¬ 
stitution of bills of exchange. 

Paper Money : paper currency.— 
This is usually considered as con¬ 
sisting of banker’s promissory notes, 
payable on demand. But these by 
no means constitute the whole of 
paper money, or even the most con¬ 
siderable part of it. The other kinds 
of paper money in common use, are 
bank credits and bills of exchange, 
domestick and foreign, and mer¬ 
chants’ drafts on each other. The 
merchant who draws this bill of ex¬ 
change in consequence of having 
transmitted goods to the amount, 
either sells this bill to his neighbour, 
who has imported goods from the 
same country, or else he receives 
from his foreign debtor a bill of ex¬ 
change in return, on some person in 
the country of the creditor, or within 
the circle of his dealings. The price 
of bills of exchange on a foreign 
country will depend, like every other 
commodity, on the demand and sup¬ 
ply, and this will depend on the ba¬ 
lance of trade between the two 
countries. If France sells to Eng¬ 
land to the amount of a million, and 
has bought from England to the 
amount of half a million, bills upon 


England will be plentiful and cheap 
in France, and bills on France will 
be comparatively scarce and dear in 
England. Exchange is limited by 
the trouble, expense, and risk of 
transmitting coin, for which it is a 
substitute. When the exchange de¬ 
manded is higher than the risk and 
expense, the merchant refuses to 
buy a bill, but sends off his coin to 
pay the balance against him. Bills 
of exchange therefore are no more 
than contrivances to save the ex¬ 
pense and risk of transmitting co“i, 
and also to save the interest that 
coin will yield if employed at home 
during the interval of transmission. 

Commerce is the sale and pur¬ 
chase, and general interchange of 
valuable commodities, by which the 
wants of men in society are supplied. 
It is divided into the home trade, the 
foreign trade, and the carrying trade. 
Commerce is popularly applied to 
the foreign trade. The object of 
commerce is the supply to one coun¬ 
try of the productions of another ; 
but avarice or profit leads to specu¬ 
lations and competitions which 
swell commerce to an unnatural ex¬ 
tent, cause supply to precede de¬ 
mand, and create more miseries than 
any other evils with which mankind 
were ever afflicted. 

Home Trade. —That sale and in¬ 
terchange of commodities which is 
carried on at home within a nation, 
and where the inhabitants of that na¬ 
tion are the sole customers and pur¬ 
chasers. The amount of the home 
trade., even in Great Britain, is about 
ten times the amount of the foreign 
trade. In every other country, from 
ten to twelve times. At home, each 
man spends about three-fourths of 
his income among his fellow-citi¬ 
zens. Foreigners purchase only 
what they are strongly tempted to 
buy. 

Foreign Trade. —That commerce 
which is carried on between foreign 
nations. A merchant is employed 
in bringing valuable articles from a 
distant country where they are 
cheap, to another country where 
they are scarce and dear. A consi¬ 
derable benefit of foreign trade is 
the mutual communication of im¬ 
provements in all things relating to 
the comfort of human existence. 





280 


POLITICAL ECONOMY. 


Carrying Trade, consists in the 
carrying of exportable commodities 
from one nation to another, the gain 
consisting in the freight thus earned. 
This trade flourishes among neutrals 
when other nations are belligerents. 
Sometimes the neutral purchases 
the commodities of one belligerent 
and sells them to another. 

The Balance of Trade has long 
been a bugbear with half-informed 
people, who look no further than 
c.^tom-house entries; but, on a 
great scale, it is in fact in favour of 
every nation upon earth, or com¬ 
merce neither would nor could be 
carried on. 

Luxuries. —Any commodity pur¬ 
chased not necessary or expedient, 
according to the rank and fortune of 
the purchaser, and tljat occasions a 
disproportionate expenditure of in¬ 
come. 

Stocks—Publick Funds— Na¬ 
tional Debt. —When the taxes are 
inadequate to the exigencies of the 
state, government draws upon pos¬ 
terity ; borrowing from individuals, 
and paying them such interest as is 
agreed upon for the capital so loaned. 
Tnis capital does not any more exist. 
It has been spent, merged, dissipated. 
The debt remains. The stipulated 
interest with which the community 
is burdened, is made transferable 
and assignable. The stocks, funds, 
national debt, are words designating 
this interest, which has become an¬ 
nually payable to individuals, for the 
capital formerly loaned by them¬ 
selves or those they represent. The 
individuals who pay the taxes, des¬ 
tined to discharge this annual inte¬ 
rest, are burdened in proportion to 
the amount assesses upon them; 
and, as all who possess property 
raise its price in proportion to the 


burden on them, so all taxes fall on 
labour, which, as the last term, can¬ 
not shift on any other class. 

Population—Healthy Popula¬ 
tion. —By this last term is meant, 
that number of people in a commu¬ 
nity which is sufficient to supply the 
demand of labour, but barely so. 
The great mass of the people live 
more fully, more happily, where 
there is a constant demand for la¬ 
bour, than where that demand is in¬ 
sufficient to employ those who have 
nothing but labour to subsist upon. 
Every man who places himself in 
the market as a labourer to be hired, 
comes in competition with every 
other man in the same situation ; 
and this competition has a tendency 
to lower wages, and of course to de¬ 
tract from the comforts, and en¬ 
croach upon the necessaries of life. 

Government is a term usually 
employed to designate and comprise 
the persons who control the legis¬ 
lation and constitute the executive 
power of a nation. In almost every 
country, what is called the Govern¬ 
ment is the most wantonly, extra¬ 
vagant and ill-managed establish¬ 
ment that the people have to sup¬ 
port. This arises from mistakes in 
the political structure of the govern¬ 
ment. Mistakes, consisting in un¬ 
necessary officers of government, 
paid by extravagant and unneces¬ 
sary salaries; in too much power 
conceded; or conceded for too long 
a period ; and in the want of means 
to enforce sufficient responsibility on 
the part of those who govern. The 
system of government should be as 
plain to be understood, and as simple 
in its construction as possible. The 
agents and officers of government 
gain by mystery and complication. 
—Professor Cooper. 





A SKETCH OF JEWISH HISTORY. 


Some of the Facts, as they appear¬ 
ed in the English edition of this work, 
the publishers, with the editor, felt 
no disposition to promulgate, many 
of them being of a local nature, and 
others of questionable utility. To 
supply the place of those omitted, 
the following brief sketches are sub¬ 
stituted, believing that they will be 
more acceptable to the reader than 
those stricken out. Those appended 
are, a brief sketch of Jewish history, 
one of American history, an account 
of the rise and progress of the useful 
arts in this country, and, also, brief 
notices of the literature of the same. 
The reader will readily see, that the 
matter thus added has been thrown 
into paragraphs, in order to conform, 
as far as practicable, to the general 
style of the work. 

American Editor. 

As a piece of composition, the cos¬ 
mogony of the Jews transcends all 
other in the world. It is brief, sub¬ 
lime, and holy ; full of Omnipotence, 
Omniscience, and boundless love. 
All things sprang from the Godhead, 
without any thing that seemed like 
human effort, as in other cosmogo¬ 
nies. One part of creation arose after 
another, as rapidly as the human 
mind can comprehend it in descrip¬ 
tion, and as beautiful and lovely as 
the imagination can conceive of it. 
Other creations arose, as the sport 
of heathen gods; but this in the 
Beginning was made for man ; and 
the dominion over the beasts of the 
field, and the fowls of the air, was 
given to him, and the greater and 
the lesser lights "were made for his 
use. “ God said, let there be light 
in the Heavens, to divide the day 
from the night, and let them be for 
signs and for seasons, and for days 
and years.”—And certainly these 
X 2 


signs and seasons, days and years, 
were for mannot for Himself, for 
to Him there is neither beginning of 
days nor end of years. 

The disobedience of man, the loss 
of Paradise, the promise to him and 
to his seed, all follow in so direct a 
chain, and, if the expression may be 
allowed, so naturally, that we should 
rather pity the man, for want of taste 
and understanding, than quarrel with 
him, who wishes to substitute any 
thing else for this beautiful proema 
of the Jewish Scriptures. 

The 1656 years from the creation 
to the flood, from the length of hu¬ 
man life, swept off but few genera¬ 
tions ; and the father of Noah, the 
connecting link between the two 
worlds, the line before and the other 
after the flood, must have been in in¬ 
timacy with the father of mankind. 

From the flood to the call of Abra¬ 
ham, 427 years after the flood, the 
nations of the earth must have con¬ 
siderably increased, and were proba¬ 
bly enlightened; for much of the 
knowledge of the antediluvian world 
was saved, it is supposed, by Noah 
and his sons. From the adventures 
of Abraham, we learn that the people 
around him were governed by kings, 
who were frequently at war. Tne 
knowledge of the true God, however, 
had been preserved by some nations, 
as well as lost by others. The lan- 
uage of mankind had previously 
een confounded, and they were no 
longer of “ one lip and one voice.” 
Those acquainted with the science 
of etymology, find, in every day’s 
advancement in knowledge, proofs 
of this fact, that all languages had 
one common origin. 

The next epoch was the institu¬ 
tion of the Passover—established to 
keep in remembrance the deliverance 
of the Jews from the land of Egypt 
and the house of bondage. This was 
430 years from the vocation of Abra¬ 
ham. This comprised a most event¬ 
ful period to the nation.—Isaac, and 
Jacob, and Esau, had lived, and the 




JEWISH HISTORY. 


262_ 

sons of Jacob, in primitive simplici¬ 
ty ; and the latter nad gone down to 
Egypt, with their aged father, to bet¬ 
ter their fortunes, on the elevation of 
Joseph, the son of Jacob, and had 
passed from a favoured people to 
slaves. They had broken their way 
from Egypt, and ventured to seek a 
land of freedom, and one they could 
call their own; and this was done by 
the sword. This was 857 years from 
the flood; and the eartn, at least 
some parts of it, had become thickly 
settled. The Asias were populous; 
and probably a good part of Europe 
was then peopled. 

From the institution of the Pass- 
over, to Saul’s accession to the throne 
of Israel, embraces a period of 396 
years. This was passed in making 
and securing conquests; sometimes 
hard pushed by their enemies, beaten, 
and oppressed; and sometimes re¬ 
acting with a vengeance that made 
their enemies beware of them. 

From Saul’s accession to the 
throne, to the close of the life of So¬ 
lomon, was thehigh and palmy state 
of Hebrew glory. It was the lot of 
David to make his empire a military 
one—it was decidedly so. He was a 
man of war, and was surrounded by 
the most valiant band of heroes that 
any monarch ever had. His, too, 
was an age of literature. He sur¬ 
passed all others of his nation as a 
poet and a scholar, and gave a men¬ 
tal tone to his people which they had 
never known before, although Sa¬ 
muel had opened the way for him by 
founding a school of the prophets. 
He elevated their poetical taste, and 

S tve to the harp new strings, and to 
e choir new members. Jerusalem 
grew in his reign, and the twelve 
tribes of Israel assumed a high rank 
among the nations of the earth, as 
well for knowledge, as military 
prowess. The reign of his son So¬ 
lomon was still more prosperous and 
glorious. David had weakened and 
subdued his foes; and Solomon had 
peace in his time. The riches of the 
world poured in upon him, and he 
displayed his grandeur with Oriental 
magnificence. He was wiser than 
all who went before him—“ And So¬ 
lomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom 
of all the children of the east coun¬ 
try, and all the wisdom of Egypt. 
For he was wiser than all men; than 
Etan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and 


Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of 
Mahol; and his fame was in all na¬ 
tions round about. And he spake 
three thousand proverbs; and his 
songs were a thousand and five. 
And he spake of trees, from the ce¬ 
dar tree that is in Lebanon, even 
unto the hyssop that springeth out 
of the wall: he spake also of beasts, 
and of fowl, and of creeping things, 
and of fishes. And there came of all 
people to hear the wisdom of Solo¬ 
mon, from all the kings of the earth, 
which had heard of his wisdom.” If 
Solomon had not more genius, he 
had more learning than his father, 
having had better opportunities in 
etting knowledge, as the son of a 
ing, from the philosophers of other 
countries, than his father, the min¬ 
strel shepherd of Israel, could have 
had. If there was not so much 
knowledge and system in his father’s 
compositions, there was a deeper de¬ 
votion, and a sublimer imagination. 
Under such kings, the people must 
have been devoted to learning, for 
people imitate their rulers in every 
thing, and no little rpinds can find 
favour in the eyes of the great, when 
they themselves are enliglitened. If 
the mighty mind of Bacon could be 
so far affected by fashion, as to imi¬ 
tate the quaint and pedantick style of 
King James, how anxious must those 
have been, whose common salutation 
was, “ O king , live for ever,” to imi¬ 
tate such splendid and royal exam¬ 
ples as those of David and Solomon. 

In the next reign, this people were 
divided among themselves, and never 
after stood so high among nations 
as before : After years of civil wars, 
of wickedness, and repentance— 
of success and misfortune—they 
were broken down and carried into 
captivity. In process of time they 
were permitted to return, and rebuild 
their temple, which had been de¬ 
stroyed. This period, from the ac¬ 
cession of their first King, Saul, un¬ 
til their return to Jerusalem, com¬ 
prises, according to chronologists, 
559 years. 

On their return to Jerusalem, the 
pntifical power was put over the 
ingly, and in this way they were 
generally governed for 536 years, to 
the coming of Christ;—sometimes, 
however, a neighbouring king claim¬ 
ed supremacy over them, and some¬ 
times a Roman proconsul was sent 




JEWISH HISTORY. 


283 


to collect the tribute imposed on 

them. Soon after the advent of 
Jesus Christ, the city of Jerusalem 
was destroyed, and the Jews scat¬ 
tered over the world. 

There is no history so full of in¬ 
struction as this. Its chronology is 
better than that of profane histories. 
It is written, not to extol any per¬ 
son, or blazon the deeds of any one; 
but seems an honest, straight-for¬ 
ward chronicle of events, naming the 
persons who were agents, and the 
events brought about. The charac¬ 
ters of individuals are models for 
all times; there is no flattery about 
them; the faults of each individual 
are named, as well as their virtues. 
Every thing relating to the patri¬ 
archs is distinct and natural. How 
different is Isaac from his father 
Abraham: the former was a man of 
energy, faith, and determination; 
there was nothing feeble or ordinary 
about him ;—but Isaac seemed form¬ 
ed only to continue the race of Abra¬ 
ham, for there is not one act of his 
life that could give him any distinc¬ 
tion, except that he went out into 
the field to meditate; but in his sons, 
Esau and Jacob, there were strong 
characteristicks; and Jacob, in his 
dying blessing, as it is called, dis¬ 
played the individual characters of 
his own children in a bold and strik¬ 
ing manner. 

The characters of Moses and 
Aaron are given us in a few words: 
Moses -was meek and, modest, and 
said that he was not eloquent , but 
was slow of speech , and of a slow 
tongue; but Aaron, it was said, 
could speak well; the one consulted, 
and advised in secret; the other was 
spokesman to the people : but in of¬ 
ten time, Moses was not so guarded 
but that in his anger he committed 
himself, although he was instead of 
God to his brother Aaron; nor was 
the high priest, whose eloquence 
could sway the people, proof against 
their complaints. In both, the super¬ 
human gifts were mingled with hu¬ 
man feelings, for lessons of instruc¬ 
tion to all. This principle of giving 
the virtues and the failings of dis¬ 
tinguished men, was never lost sight 
of in the Jewish history. The mar¬ 
vellous strength of Sampson was 
wasted in wild frolicks of daring— 
and his mightiest feats had a lu¬ 
dicrous air about them; even hie 


death would probably have been dis¬ 
graceful, if the spirit within him had 
not stirred him to make a sacrifice of' 
Israel’s enemies, to avenge himself of 
his wrongs. He was given for an 
example, that strength may be over¬ 
come by weakness, and wisdom by 
folly. The character of the prophet 
Samuel is traced from his birth to 
his death with astonishing minute¬ 
ness in a few short chapters. The 
first moments of his early visions are 
recounted, and also his last acts; 
and the whole history of the Jews 
during this period is admirably car¬ 
ried on with the biography of this 
judge in Israel. The lives of King 
Saul and his son are only secondary 
to it, and seem intended merely for 
contrast and illustration. 

The history of the age was not 
only in the biography of their leaders, 
but in their poetry also. An ode or 
poem was made to commemorate 
every great occasion, and sung by all 
who could sing a stave; and repeat¬ 
ed on every anniversary of the great 
event it was intended to celebrate. 
On the passage of the red sea ; Moses 
wrote a poem, and sang it himself; 
while his sister Miriam, a prophetess 
in Israel, sang the chorus. This song 
was an entire history of the event, 
and was also an imperishable monu¬ 
ment raised to perpetuate the gra¬ 
titude of the nation. The song of 
Deborah, in which her chief general 
joined, was so descriptive of the mis¬ 
fortunes of the country before she 
arose a mother in Israel , that no 
portion of the common narrative can 
be compared with it: she calls on 
kings and princes to hear; she says 
that the high ways were unoccupied, 
and the traveller walked through by¬ 
ways; she describes the deserted vil¬ 
lages by reason of the desolating 
wars, and the infidelity which reign¬ 
ed in this state of national calamity; 
she enumerates the tribes who acted 
bravqly in the war with Sisera, who 
came down with force and might 
against him; and rising into poeti¬ 
cal splendour, she says, They fought 
from heaven; the stars in their 
courses fought Sisera. The river of 
Kislion swept them away , that an¬ 
cient river , the river Kishon: O my 
soul , thou hast trodden down strength. 

The denunciations against tliose 
who absented themselves that day 
were deep and bitter, but full of 






284 


JEWISH HISTORY. 


patriotick justice. “ Curse ye Me- 
roz, said the angel of the Lord , 
curse ye bitterly the inhabitants 
thereof; because they came not to the 
kelp of the Lord,—to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty .” 

David’s lamentation over Saul and 
Jonathan was a beautiful elegy, made 
to commemorate their virtues ;—it 
was taught to the daughters of Judah, 
who were the musicians and the pro¬ 
phetesses of the day. The great 
psalmist knew that such an epitaph 
would last longer and be better 
known to mankind in future times, 
thus written on the memories of suc¬ 
cessive generations, than if he had 
reared pyramids to their fame, and 
covered them with a thousand in¬ 
scriptions. 

The book of Job, as it is called, is 
one of the finest dramas ever written, 
whoever might have been the author. 
The plot is more natural than most 
of those of the Greek tragedians, and 
is full of better morals and a higher 
philosophy, dictated by a more ele¬ 
vated muse. The Idumean bard was 
initiated into all the wisdom of the 
most enlightened nations; he was a 
naturalist and an astronomer, as 
well as a poet, and added to his 
knowledge of science and literature, 
and to the most admirable genius for 
poetry, an acquaintance with the 
true God, whose government is as 
benevolent as just. The answers of 
the hero of the drama are as pious as 
wise; and, with the familiarity of 
primitive times, contain the richness 
of Eastern magnificence. 

The profound scholars in Hebrew 
literature inform us, that there is as 
much difference in the language in 
which this work is written, ana that 
of the common Jewish chronicles, as 
there is between that of the old Eng¬ 
lish historians and ballad makers, 
and the divine sweetness and lofty 
composure of the verse of Paradise 
Lost. If this be not true to the full 
extent of the assertion, it is so in a 
. considerable measure; and this truth 
is, in no slight degree, visible even in 
the translation which is now in com¬ 
mon use. Several Oriental scholars, 
not entirely satisfied with the present 
translation, have given us others, 
abounding in new beauties, and de¬ 
veloping new points ; with notes, 
containing some delicious morsels of 
criticism. 


The prophets, whose works have 
come down to us, lived in the most 
troublesome times of Israel; some 
few of them before, but most of them 
about the time that the Jews were in 
difficulty, after the dismemberment 
of the tribes, and while the conse¬ 
quent civil wars were desolating the 
country. The slaughtered hosts of 
their own countrymen, gave to the 
thinking, feeling, and pious part of 
the community, a deep tone of grief 
and anguish ; and it is every where 
found in their writings. Isaiah added 
to his denunciations and forebodings, 
the mightiest promises that were 
ever given to man. The whole ia 
clothed in epick dignity, and every 
word comes to us as from one speak¬ 
ing the oracles of God. He is some¬ 
times mystical, from the intensi ty of 
his feeling, and his numerous flights 
of imagination. He taught the hei¬ 
nousness of sin, the impudence of 
sinful man, the oppression and the 
covetousness of rulers, and the cer¬ 
tainty of fast-coming evils to his 
country. His visions are full of the 
glory of inspiration; and his Sera¬ 
phims burn with a hallowed fire, sur¬ 
passing those of other prophets.— 
He prophesies the coming of the 
Messiah and his peaceable kingdom, 
in words that breathe the airs of 
Heaven ; the fate of Babylon is pre¬ 
dicted with almost historical minute¬ 
ness ; the downfall of the great city 
is proclaimed; the mother of harlots 
is to sink ; and the wretched rem¬ 
nant of his countrymen are to be 
restored. The whole of the book is 
terrifically beautiful, and awfully 
true, in sentiment as well as in pro¬ 
phecy. 

Jeremiah is full of tenderness, of 
delicacy, and feverish distress for the 
people of his country. He lived in 
evil times, and his soul was alive to 
every thing of history or of prophecy. 
It is worthy the most profound at¬ 
tention, for its deep feeling and poet¬ 
ical elegance. 

Daniel makes a most distinguish¬ 
ed figure in Babylon, with Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar, and with his grandson, 
Belshazzar, as he was finishing 
his wicked course. With Darius he 
was also a favourite—and made an 
indelible impression on all the in¬ 
habitants of Babylon. His whole 
soul was wrapped up in the fate of 
his people, and it gathered all his na- 






_ AMERICAN 

rive and acquired strength, to serve 

them with all the forecast of his 
hallowed calling. The rest of the 
prophets, as they have reached us, 
are probably only fragments of 
larger works ; but as the scriptures 
are, they are invaluable, and we 
should read them day and night, for 
information and edification. The 
reader may rise from the Jewish 
scriptures, often indeed shocked by 
the wickedness of man, and with 
tears for the miseries of individuals 
and nations; but he sees a mighty 
and eternal mind presiding over all 
things, educing good from evil? a 
power that turns and overturns, un¬ 
til all things come right, and the iron 
rod of the oppressor is broken, and 
the meek and lowly are raised in 
strength, and received into favour. 
New lights are rushing in upon the 
human mind in this our day, as it 
regards this volume;—much of the 
dark has been illumined; much of 
the mysterious explained, and many 
apparent difficulties cleared up, by 
the great vigour with which the di¬ 
vines of our time have pursued Bibli¬ 
cal criticism. 


SKETCH OF AMERICAN HIS¬ 
TORY. 

Among the extraordinary events 
recorded in modern history, the dis¬ 
covery of this Western Continent 
stands pre-eminent. To Christopher 
Columbus belongs this distinguished 
honour.—On Friday the 4th of Au¬ 
gust, 1492, he sailed from Palos, in 
Spain, with three small vessels, hav¬ 
ing ninety men, who were furnished 
with provision for one year. He, as 
Admiral, commanded the Santa 
Martha, the largest ship, Martin 
Alonzo Pinzon was captain of the 
second, and Vincent Yanez Pinzon, 
of the third. When about 200 
leagues to the west of the Canaries, 
Columbus discovered the magnetick 
needle did not point exactly to the 
north, but varied to the west. This 
extraordinary phenomenon excited 
great alarm among his men ; but 
Columbus, with wonderful sagacity 
and address, was enabled to allay 
their fears. On the night of the 11th 
of October, land was discovered, 
which proved to be an island, now 
called St. Salvador, one of the West 
Indies.—On the 12th, Columbus 


HISTORY. _ 235 

landed in the new world. The na¬ 

tives were filled with astonishment, 
considering the Spaniards to be su- 
periour beings. On this voyage, he 
discovered several islands, among 
which was Cuba. This great navi¬ 
gator made three other voyages, in 
the last of which he discovered the 
continent at the mouth of the river 
Orinoco. The latter days of this great 
man were imbittered by the ingrati¬ 
tude of his king, and the persecutions 
of his enemies. He died, broken¬ 
hearted, at Valadolid, in Spain, on 
the 20th of May, 1506, in the 59th 
year of his age. 

Two Venetians, John Cabot, and 
his son Sebastian, in the service of 
Henry VII. of England, were com¬ 
missioned by this monarch to under¬ 
take an exploring voyage to the new 
world. On the 22d June, 1497, they 
discovered Newfoundland ; from 
thence they coasted along the con¬ 
tinent as far as the Floridas. 

Among the first adventurers was 
Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, 
who in 1499 accompanied Ojeda, an 
enterprising and skilful navigator, 
on his voyage of discovery. On his 
return, Amerigo published an ac¬ 
count of his voyage in Latin. This 
circulated rapidly, and was distri¬ 
buted throughout all Europe. Colum¬ 
bus had not then published any par¬ 
ticulars of his adventures. Owing to 
this circumstance, and to some un¬ 
accountable caprice, this continent 
has ever since been unjustly called 
America, instead of Columbia. The 
history of the settlement of South 
America is nothing but a tissue of 
bold enterprise and of crime. 

This discovery ruined Spain and 
Portugal, and the rapidity of their 
downfall was in proportion to the 
influx of wealth from the mines in 
their provinces. The most distin¬ 
guished adventurers to South Ame¬ 
rica were Cortes and Pizarro. Their 
exploits were those of reality, but in 
appearance those of fiction and ro¬ 
mance. Juan Ponce d’Leon sailed 
in search of the fountain of immor¬ 
tal youth, but found a premature 
grave. True immortality is only 
found by pursuing the path of virtue 
and wisdom. 

But we will leave South America, 
with all her wonders and all her 
crime, to proceed to North America, 
a land of glorious growth, in which 





AMERICAN HISTORY. 


286 _ 

all the great doctrines of rational 
freedomliave been developed. The 
history of South America remains 
to be written out; and perhaps it 
were better that a part of it should 
never be fully understood. What 
were once colonies of Spain are 
now nominal Republicks, and have 
set up a claim to be numbered with 
the republican family. 

In 1578, Queen Elizabeth granted 
letters patent to Sir Humphrey Gil¬ 
bert, giving him great power and 
immunities, in an exploring expedi¬ 
tion. Among other privileges, he 
was authorized to take possession of 
all barbarous lands unoccupied by 
any Christian people. He was an 
unfortunate navigator, yet a bold, 
persevering, and excellent man. 
He took possession of Newfound¬ 
land, one of the most dreary and in¬ 
hospitable spots yet discovered, and 
that at a time when he had half a 
continent to choose from. In 1584, 
Sir Walter Raleigh laid a plan before 
Queen Elizabeth, for settling some 
portion of the territory claimed by 
England, on account of the disco¬ 
veries of the Cabots; the Queen ap¬ 
proved of his project, and Raleigh 
sent out two experienced navigators, 
who, on their return, gave a favoura¬ 
ble account of the country. The 
next year he made farther efforts, 
with extensive means, to form a set¬ 
tlement on the southern part of what 
is now considered as the old United 
States, but disaster after disaster 
destroyed his plans, and baffled all 
his calculations. During this period, 
Raleigh was making the most stren¬ 
uous exertions in colonizing Ame¬ 
rica, and several bold navigators 
were his coadjutors in this good 
cause. Thomas Cavendish, who 
had circumnavigated the globe, was 
now sailing along the coast of South 
America. Sir Richard Grenville 
conducted an expedition to Virginia. 
He was a gallant commanded and 
fell, mortally wounded, in a fight 
with the Spaniards. Christopher 
Newport, George Drake, Henry May, 
George Weymouth, and others, were 
out upon expeditions to harass 
Spain, and to establish colonies, or 
to protect those already established. 

Bartholomew Gosnold, in 1602, was 
the first who came directly across 
the ocean, instead of going to the 
Wost Indies. He touched the con¬ 


tinent in North latitude 42, and tak¬ 
ing plenty of cod-fish, named the 
place Cape Cod, or, as some say, 
from finding the cape in shape like 
the tail of that fish. There is a small 
island, not far from the cape, called 
Gosnold’s Island, which bears marks 
of some civilization. In 1603, Rich¬ 
ard Hakluyt followed Gosnold, and 
coasted from Penobscot to Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay. 

The French now recovering from 
their civil war, sent out explorers all 
along the coast. The English had 
hitherto failed in every attempt to 
plant colonies on these shores. 
Many noble efforts were made, but 
all to no purpose. More than a cen¬ 
tury had elapsed since Cabot’s dis¬ 
covery of the northern part of the 
continent; voyage after voyage had 
been performed by highly sagacious 
navigators ; but many, inclined to 
the belief of predestination, would 
have said, it is evidently the will of 
heaven, that the wilderness shall 
never blossom as the rose, nor shall 
civilization spread in the new world; 
yet it was otherwise decreed. 

In 1606, there was not a log hut 
in all North America, inhabited by a 
white man, notwithstanding all the 
exertions that had been made for 
colonizing the country. The spirit of 
the adventurers was, however, nei¬ 
ther broken nor subdued; and hun¬ 
dreds who once thought lightly of the 
plan of sending forth colonists, now 
heartily approved of the measure. 
A greater diffusion of knowledge ex¬ 
panded the views of European poli¬ 
ticians, and the commonalty began 
to think that men might live and 
flourish in other than European 
climes; but had the adventurers fore¬ 
seen all they had to encounter, the 
wilds would nave remained, for ages 
to come, the hunting grounds of the 
savages, and the streams would have 
rolled on unbroken by mill or dam 
to the ocean. 

In 1607, a patent was given by 
King James to certain persons, and 
a hundred of them embarked for Vir¬ 
ginia. They intended to land at 
Roanoke, but were driven by a storm 
to the northward of that place. On 
the 13th of May, they took possession 
of the spot in Virginia, novy called 
Jamestown. They began in aris¬ 
tocracy, and of course went on in 
confusion. John Smith was the soul 





AMERICAN HISTORY. 287 


of the whole, and without him, they 
would all have perished. His ad¬ 
ventures have produced volumes, as 
wonderful as can be found in the re¬ 
gion of romance. Smith explored 
the country, and was the first person 
who ever gave a map of it. At first, 
travellers, miners, and a few assist¬ 
ants, came to Virginia; the imagina¬ 
tion of the patentees being diseased 
by the stories of gold and precious 
stones which they had no doubt could 
be found here. The next year they 
grew more rational, and brought 
Dutchmen and Poles to make glass 
and potashes. In 1609, a new char¬ 
ter was obtained, and fresh vigour 
given to the enterprise, but still more 
attention was paid to settling the 
offices, Governour, Lt. Governour, 
Admiral, Vice Admiral, and Members 
of Council, than to the great inte¬ 
rests of planting a thriving colony. 
The whole was preserved by the 
friendship of Pocahontas, the daugh¬ 
ter of King Powhatan, and the pru¬ 
dence and bravery of Captain John 
Smith. It seems to be a law of na¬ 
ture, that a colony, sent from any 
country, never feel at home, until 
they commence the cultivation of the 
soil: fifty years of traffick would not 
wed a people to a new situation so 
completely, as the planting and reap¬ 
ing of a few acres for a single year. 
There is a strange delight in seeing 
the products of industry springing 
from the bosom of our mother earth; 
her fruits and flowers are full of in¬ 
nocence, as well as of comfort and 
pleasure. Fifty or sixty nhuses were 
now built, several forts erected, and 
the Virginia colony appeared to be 
thriving in agriculture, manufactures, 
and fishing. This year Henry Hud¬ 
son, an Englishman in the service 
of the Dutch, attempted to find a 
north-west passage to the East In¬ 
dies, but his plan was frustrated by 
touching the eastern part of the con¬ 
tinent. He then examined the coast 
to the Chesapeake. He also explored 
the river which now bears his name, 
but to what extent is not precisely 
known. The next year the Dutch 
sent a ship to open a trade at Man¬ 
hattan, at which place a trading 
party was left. In 1613, Capt. Argali 
arrived from England, and compelled 
them to acknowledge allegiance to 
Great Britain. The next year, a new 
Governour came out from Amster¬ 


dam, with a reinforcement, but the 
colony at first refused to acknow¬ 
ledge his authority. They afterwards 
submitted to him. A fort was built 
where Albany now stands, called 
Fort Orange. The colony prospered, 
and carried on the fur trade to a con¬ 
siderable extent. They wisely kept 
peace with the neighbouring Indians, 
and of course received all the advan¬ 


tage of their traffick. The whole 
country was one vast hunting ground, 
from Manhattan to the North Pole, 
and west to the Pacifick Ocean. Half 
a world was devoted to the animal 
creation, hunted by wild men who 
were in many respects but little supe- 
riour to the fowls of the air, ana to 
the beasts that roamed the forests. 
New Amsterdam flourished under 
the protection of the Dutch, for half 
a century from this time, when it 
was taken by the English, and re¬ 
tained by them as a colony of the 
crown, until lost to England by the 
American Revolution, which com¬ 
menced in 1775, one hundred and 
sixty-six years after the first settle¬ 
ment by the Dutch adventurers. The 
people in general were pleased with 
the prospect of change, and made 
spirited efforts to shake off British 


authority. 

In 1613, John Rolf, an Englishman, 
married Pocahontas, the daughter of 
Powhatan. This connexion secured 
peace to Virginia for several years. 
She accompanied her husband, in 
1616, to England, where she was re¬ 
ceived with great respect. The King 
and Queen paid her every attention. 
She died the next year as she was 
about returning to ner native land. 
She was only 22 years of age when 
she deceased, deeply lamented by 
those of her nation, and by every 
Englishman who was a well-wisher 
to tne settlement in Virginia. His¬ 
tory scarcely furnishes a character, 
which, in so few years of human life, 
was a greater benefactor of mankind 
than Pocahontas. Her descendants 
are still living in Virginia. Captain 
John Smith sent a memorial to the 
Queen in her behalf, when she was 
in England, fraught with high and 
deserved commendations, proving 
her to have been a most noble friend 
to the colony. 

In 1619, the King of England made 
an attempt to collect money to esta¬ 
blish a college for the Indians, but 





288 


AMERICAN 

like all attempts of this kind, the plan 
proved almost abortive. The nature 
of savage life was, and is, and ever 
will be, at war with civilization. The 
wise may philosophize, and the good 
may exert themselves, bat no per¬ 
manent good can ever be effected by 
attempting their civilization. The 
very elements of their nature are at 
variance with the course of science, 
letters, and the arts. 

This year the colony of Virginia 
was visited by a most distressing 
pestilence, which essentially retarded 
its growth. In fact they passed ten 
years in distresses, doubts, and pain¬ 
ful forebodings; nor were their mise¬ 
ries at an end at the conclusion of 
this period. 

In 1622, on the 22d of March, 347 
of the colonists were massacred by 
the Indians. They fell upon friends 
and foes •, the carnage was horrible, 
even in the higher classes of the co¬ 
lonists. Famine soon followed, and 
destruction seems to have driven her 
plough-share through all Virginia. 
Nine out of ten of the planters were 
destroyed. The parent country hap¬ 
pily sent them succours, or they 
would have perished in a mass. If 
one takes a view of the means which 
had been used, and the effect that 
had been produced, he would say, 
that no history of colonization ever 
presented such a series of calamities, 
of fajnine, pestilence, and the sword. 

The year 1620 is another memora¬ 
ble epoch in the history of North 
America. The religious disputes in 
the reigns of Edward, Mary, and 
Elizabeth, and which still continued 
after the accession of James, were 
the causes of this era. 

The Puritans were among the most 
moral and best informed of the com¬ 
monalty of England. They possess¬ 
ed a good share of English spirit, or 
as some might call it—obstinacy. 
The fires lighted at Smithfield were 
never to be extinguished in the reli¬ 
gious world. Men had begun to 
think for themselves, even in reli- 
ious matters. The Catholick power 
ad long before been put down, in 
the reign of Henry VIII., and never 
arose, only momentarily, again. Cal¬ 
vin had assailed the church of Rome, 
and by sturdy blows had crumbled 
into pieces, in Germany, the massy 
buckler of Saint Peter. Luther had 
also come down in the plenitude of 


HISTORY - . _ 

his strength, and made tremendous 

inroads upon the strong hold of the 
Catholick church. A new era was 
about dawning upon the world. The 
Puritans took a decided stand in 
England, and opposed all the cor¬ 
ruptions of the church. 

The year 1620 was rendered me¬ 
morable by the landing of the pil¬ 
grims at Plymouth. Some of the 
English Puritans had, under the Rev. 
John Robinson, left England, and 
took up their residence in Holland, 
in 1607. In 1608, they resided at 
Amsterdam, and ir* 1609, they re¬ 
moved to Leyden. Beginning to fear 
that the strict discipline which they 
had prescribed to themselves, would 
become relaxed in this place, and 
finding that the Lord’s day was not 
so strictly observed as they consider¬ 
ed proper, they turned their attention 
to the new world, with the hope of 
there finding an asylum. After slight 
preparations for such a mighty un¬ 
dertaking, the adventurers left Ley¬ 
den for England in July, and sailed 
on the 5th of August from South¬ 
ampton for America; one of the ves¬ 
sels in which they embarked, how¬ 
ever, proving leaky, they were twice 
obliged to put back, and were at 
length compelled to proceed on their 
voyage in tire Mayflower alone, on 
the 6th of September. On the 9th 
of November, they discovered land 
at Cape Cod. Perceiving that they 
had by design or chance been carried 
too far north, they directed their 
course to the south to find the mouth 
of the HHildson; but the navigator, 
from fear or duplicity, pretended that 
he could not get south at this season 
of the year without great difficulty. 
After some discussion among the ad¬ 
venturers, it was agreed to land as 
soon as possible. On the 11th of 
November, a plan of government 
was fixed upon, and signed by forty- 
one of their number. The whole 
party of freemen amounted to 101 
persons. Mr. John Carver was made 
governour for one year: Here com¬ 
menced a republican form of go¬ 
vernment, which has lasted for more 
than two centuries. The 11th of De¬ 
cember (the 22d new style) has been 
considered the anniversary of the 
landing of the pilgrims. They en¬ 
dured every privation, and this they 
sustained by a high religious feeling. 

I They felt that tney could worship 







AMERICAN HISTORY. 289 


God after their own manner, having 

no mitre to bow to, nor a synod to 
answer; but they had made too many 
struggles for human nature to bear, 
and a third part of them were in their 
graves before the vernal sun had 
warmed the soil of which they had 
taken possession. 

In 1628, a settlement w'as made at 
Salem under John Endicot. The 
adventurers suffered all the horrours 
of sickness and famine. 


The next colony, and the best di¬ 
rected of all that had been attempted, 
was the one that settled in Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay in 1630. They had a 
fleet of 14 vessels, and brought 840 
passengers of various occupations, 
agriculturists, andmechanicks. They 
had arranged their plan of civil go¬ 
vernment at home, bat not exactly 
their religious one. This was done 
on the 30th of July, at Charlestown, 
where they established a church. 
Governour Winthrop, the leader, was 
a man of great learning and decision 
of character. They set out on a broad 
principle of constitutional rights, and 
nave ever since maintained them. 
The first general court of the Massa¬ 
chusetts colony was held at Boston, 
on the 10th of October of this year. 
Isaac Johnson, one of the best men 
in the colony, died soon after he had 
madehislocationin Boston. He was 
a pious, liberal man, of good manners 
and ample estate; he had married 
Lady Arabella, daughter of the Earl 
of Lincoln, who died soon after she 
landed at Salem. She has ever since 
been a theme of praise among the 
historians of Massachusetts, for she 
was high-born, pious, rich,and withal 
beautiful. She married Mr. Johnson 
from a love of holy men, and a desire 
to see a church built up in the new 
world. The ways of Providence are 
inscrutable.—“ She who had titles, 
wealth, and fame, sleeps without a 
stone or name,” in an undistinguish¬ 
ed grave. Saints wear not their 
crowns on earth. 


The Indians in 1636 began to mani¬ 
fest a hostility towards the whites : 
the next year a victory, almost ex¬ 
terminating, was obtained over the 
Pequods. The first impressions are 
strong,and this awful slaughter of the 
Indians struck them nerveless for a 
long time. They believed that the 
Great Spirit had deserted them or 


that the Englishman’s God was the 
strongest. 

The first settlement in Maryland 
was commenced in 1633. For this 
enterprise the world is indebted to 
the first and second Lords Bal timore. 
They laid the foundation of the pro¬ 
vince on the broad basis of security 
to property and freedom in religion. 
The emigrants, on their arrival, pro¬ 
ceeded honourably, peaceably, and 
it may be said prosperously. 

In 1635, Connecticut was first set¬ 
tled by John VYinthrop, son of the 
governour of Massachusetts. He 
brought out a commission from 
Loras Say and Seal, Brook, and 
others, to begin a settlement at 
Connecticut, of which he was ap¬ 
pointed the governour. Winthrop 
had many of the virtues of his father, 
and the plantation flourished. This 
year Massachusetts received a great 
influx of emigrants, some of them of 
distinction, among whom was young 
Sir Henry Vane, who was after¬ 
wards chosen governour, and kept a 
great parade of office, having hal¬ 
berdiers as a guard when he went to 
church. 

In 1637 appeared Ann Hutchinson, 
a woman of talents, but an enthu¬ 
siast, who gave lectures upon divi¬ 
nity. She set the whole country in 
a flame. A Synod was called, and 
eighty-two errours propagated by 
this gifted woman were condemned: 
she was excommunicated, and was 
obliged, after the death of her hus¬ 
band, to leave New England. She, 
with her family, 16 in number, were 
all, except one, massacred by the 
Indians. This, some considered as 
a judgement upon her. It would not 
however answer to test the doctrines 
of the Apostles by such judgements. 

This year a publick school at 
Newtown was made a college, and 
called Cambridge, in honour of the 
college of that name in England. 

A settlement was commenced in 
New Hampshire by John Wheel¬ 
wright, and others. 

In 1641 the General Court of Massa¬ 
chusetts established a hundred laws, 
called the body of liberties. They 
were drafted by Nathaniel Ward, a 
clergyman of Ipswich, in the com- 
m,onw r ealth, who had been a lawyer. 
These laws contained all the funda¬ 
mental principles, found in our con¬ 
stitutions and civil code throughout 





290 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


the United States. Ward was a 
firm friend to the freedom of his 
country, but he had a well-balanced 
mind, and constituted his Body of 
laws so as to meet the future wants 
of the people. In 1643, a union of the 
New England colonies was formed, 
to advise and assist each other in 
case of danger from any quarter; 
and there were sufficient causes for 
this movement, which was then 
done in good faith, and has been kept 
in sincerity up to the present time. 
New England is, and ever has been, 
virtually one family. They are, in 
general, moved by the same impulses, 
and follow similar pursuits. 

In 1636, Rhode Island was first 
settled by Roger Williams, a clergy¬ 
man, at a place which he then called 
Providence, and which still bears 
the same name. He was a man of 
a bold independent mind, but his doc¬ 
trines were not acceptable to a great 
majority of the people of Massachu¬ 
setts ; he therefore left them to take 
up his residence among the savages 
of the wilderness. He formed trea¬ 
ties with the Indians, became a 
reat favourite with them, and made 
imself acquainted with their lan¬ 
guage. He went to England, obtained 
a charter, and filled the offices which 
he held in his small province with 
great judgement, though his life was 
marked with some eccentricities. A 
large and wealthy city now flourishes 
where he set up his log cabin, and 
trusted to Providence. 

In 1646, the legislature of Massa¬ 
chusetts passed the first act for car¬ 
rying the gospel among the Indians, 
and John Elliot of Roxbury, at the 
recommendation of the clergymen 
of the province, was set to work to 
translate the Bible into the Indian 
language. This Herculean labour 
v/as performed by him with incredi¬ 
ble despatch, and was printed at the 
press in Cambridge, with many pious 
tracts. This gave the good man the 
title of “ The Apostle to the Indians,” 
jWhich he has ever since retained. It 
is not for us, of the present day, to 
decide the amount of good effected 
by this great labour, in a religious 
point of view; but it certainly was 
a great political service, as many of 
the Indians were neutralized by it. 
Savages are in general grateful for 
services rendered ; and when they 
saw their good religious father was 


solely enlisted in making them Chris¬ 
tians, if they did not comprehend 
what this was, they perceived that 
such was his zeal and affection, that 
it was something he thought essen¬ 
tial to them and their children. 

In 1649, a revolution took place in 
England, and Charles I. was be¬ 
headed. The house of Lords was 
put down, and what was called a 
commonwealth, established under 
Cromwell. Tnis, which in the end 
did much good in England, was not 
without its beneficial effects in some 
parts of the new world; not that 
New England ever was in favour of 
Oliver Cromwell, but they hated 
all arbitrary power. Charles II, 
still retained his authority in Vir¬ 
ginia, but did not venture to do any 
thing to control New England. 
Under Cromwell, in 1651, the parlia¬ 
ment passed the famous navigation 
act, from which sprung the American 
revolution, more than a century af¬ 
terwards, when the colonies had in¬ 
creased, and that act had become op¬ 
pressive in the extreme. This was 
not, in all probability, contemplated 
at the passage of it. 

In 1660, Charles II. came back 
to London, not the least improved 
by his misfortunes. One of his first 
acts was offensive to the American 
colonies, for it perpetuated the navi¬ 
gation act with additional severities. 
It enacted that “no sugar, indigo, 
ginger, tobacco, cotton, fustick, dy¬ 
ing-woods, of the growth of English 
territories in America, Asia, or Africa, 
shall be transported thence to any 
other countries than those belonging 
to the Crown of England, under the 
penalty of forfeiture; and all vessels 
sailing to the plantations were to 
give bond to bring said commodities 
to England.” This was considered 
oppression by all, and outrageous by 
some of them, and they never did 
fully comply with it. Another affair 
concurred to excite the colonies; this 
was the rage shown by Charles II., 
because the provinces would not 
give up the judges of King Charles I., 
Whally and Goffe, who had fled 
for protection to New England. The 
royal messengers found it impossi¬ 
ble to get these fugitives into their 
power. The governours, clergy, and 
all the people, protected them, and 
they had to return without effecting 
the great object of their mission. 




291 


_ AMERICAN 

These distinguished men lived in 

New Haven, and afterwards in 
Hadley, in perfect retirement and 
safety for many years. The hearts 
of freemen are the best hiding-places 
for the enemies of tyrants. The 
emissaries were often almost within 
an arm’s length of the objects of 
their pursuit, but no royal smile or 
bounty ever made a partizan amongst 
the provincials. 

In 1662, Sir Henry Vane, who had 
figured as governour of Massachu¬ 
setts, and was one of the Cromwel¬ 
lian party, was executed for high 
treason. He was an aristocratick 
puritan, and with the pretended sim¬ 
plicity and austerity of a saint, had 
the ambition of a Caesar. 

In 1663, the province of South 
Carolina was formed, and liberty of 
conscience was allowed by the char¬ 
ter. 

In 1664, Nova Cassova, or New 
Jersey, was settled under the aus¬ 
pices of Lord Berkeley and others. 

In 1673, New York and New Jer¬ 
sey were taken by the Dutch from 
the English, whicn they kept , until 
the next year, when, by a treaty be¬ 
tween England and the States Gene¬ 
ral of Holland, they were restored 
to the English. 

In 1675, a war broke out be¬ 
tween Philip, king of the Wampa- 
noags, and New England. Philip 
was a savage possessing the highest 
powers of mind. A few years before 
this, he had renewed the treaty 
made by his father with the colo¬ 
nists, and in a time of profound peace, 
took occasion, as is conjectured by 
some historians, to visit the tribes of 
Indians from the St. Lawrence to 
the Ohio. This conjecture is found¬ 
ed upon the fact, that many of them, 
in after times, had traditions of King 
Philip’s visit. It is also rendered 
probable, from the length of time he 
was absent, and the well known 
rapidity of the movements of the 
sons of the forest. Massacres 
occurred in several places, which 
Philip disavowed as proceeding 
through his orders. These were so 
many signals for the movement of 
distant tribes to the east and west of 
Mount Hope, the royal residence. 
The war was now raging fiercely on 
Connecticut river, and various other 
places, and the Indians were fre¬ 
quently victorious. The whole of 


HISTORY. 

New England became sadly alarm¬ 

ed, and were aroused to save them¬ 
selves from annihilation. In Decem¬ 
ber, the Massachusetts forces being 
joined by those of Plymouth ana 
those of Connecticut, determined on 
a desperate resistance. This was on 
the 18th of December. The army 
was fortified in a swamp at Peta- 
quamset. The colonists commenced 
their march at day break on the 19th, 
and reached the edge of the swamp 
about noon. The Indians were soon 
traced to their strong hold, and the 
troops rushed on to effect an en¬ 
trance ; this was done, but the In¬ 
dians made such deadly fires upon 
them, and killed so many officers 
and men, that they were obliged to 
retreat. Enraged at their loss, and 
fighting for existence, thev continued 
to assail the strong hold, and be¬ 
came masters of it, as the sun was 
going down. The victors seized one 
of the torches of the savages, and the 
fort and numerous wigwams within 
it, were soon in a blaze. A thousand 
Indians are supposed to have perish¬ 
ed in the flames, or to have fallen in 
the battle. Of the allied troops, 
nearly a hundred were killed or died 
of their wounds, and a hundred and 
thirty-five wounded. This was a 
grieyous blow to the Indians, but 
Philip was still as fierce and active 
as ever. He commenced the cam¬ 
paign in a little more than a month 
after this disaster, and made devas¬ 
tation and blood follow his footsteps. 
Philip was greatly reinforced, and 
the war whoop was heard in almost 
every village on the frontier. The 
Narragansets plundered Warwick of 
horses, cattle, and sheep. 

On the 10th of February, 1676, fif¬ 
teen hundred Indians fell upon Lan¬ 
caster, and burned a considerable 
part of the town, and killed or made 
prisoners some forty or fifty of the 
inhabitants. Medfield was next sur¬ 
prised, and a part of the town burnt. 
Weymouth soon after suffered. On 
the 12th of March, they laid the 
town of Groton in ashes. 

On the 17th, Warwick was entirely 
destroyed. Marlborough, Rehoboth, 
Providence, and many other towns, 
greatly suffered. Capt. Wadsworth, 
who was sent from Boston to bring 
help to the towns now in tribulation 
and danger, was surrounded by the 
enemy, and his whole forces totally 




AMERICAN HISTORY. 


292_ 

destroyed. On Connecticut river 
some advantages were gained by the 
English. In the action called the 
Fall-fight, the enemy lost several 
hundred of all ages and sexes. 
During the ensuing summer months, 
the colonies were in arms; hardly 
enough were left at home to put the 
seed into the ground, or reap the 
harvest. Philip, as well as the colo¬ 
nists, began to find the war press 
heavily. He returned to the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Mount Hope. He had 
grown desperate, and came with a 
few followers, to light up his warlike 
mind, at beholding the country of 
his ancestors. One of his party be¬ 
trayed him, and showed his haunts 
to the great Indian-killer, Colonel 
Church. Philip was in a swamp; 
Church took possession of all the 
avenues to it; and as Philip fled, an 
Indian and a white man were in his 
path ; the gun of the latter missed 
fire, but the Indian shot him. The 
whole country rang with shouts of 
joy; the master spirit of the great 
and extended league was gone, and 
peace of course must inevitably en¬ 
sue. The Indians now sued for it. 
Philip expired in the cause of patriot¬ 
ism. He and his enemy were on the 
plank together; one must sink, that 
the other might swim. It was his 
fate to perish, and with him the hopes 
of the red men.—Pillage, plunder, 
and conflagration, ceased when he 
fell; but the wounds he had given 
were deep, and required a long time 
to be healed. 

While New England was suffering 
by Indian wars, Virginia was torn 
with intestine commotions. Natha¬ 
niel Bacon, a daring fellow, led on 
the insurgents with considerable suc¬ 
cess. Jamestown was burnt. Many 
of the evils of civil war ensued, but 
the death of Bacon put an end to 
them. These calamities arose from 
the bad management of the men in 
power. 

In 1680, a comet made its appear¬ 
ance, and alarmed many in England 
and America; but at this time it 
might rather have been called any 
thing, than a forerunner of pestilence 
and war, for now peace w'as esta¬ 
blished. If it had appeared a few 
years before, it then might have been 
so considered. 

In 1682, the settlement of Pennsyl¬ 
vania was commenced by William 


Penn, a learned and judicious Qua¬ 
ker, born in high life, the son of a 
British Admiral, and heir to a large 
fortune. He began wisely, proceeded 
judiciously, and founded a province 
on the broad basis of sound policy. 
In less than sixty years from the 
foundation, the state of Pennsylva¬ 
nia was the second in respect to 
trade, judging by the custom-house 
books, of all the colonies in North 
America. He laid out, and began 
the building of the city of Philadel¬ 
phia, and lived to see its extraordi¬ 
nary prosperity, far exceeding in its 
growth any other city or town of the 
British Provinces. 

James the Second, in 1685, suc¬ 
ceeded his brother Charles, and dis¬ 
covered all the folly and obstinacy 
of his predecessor, without any of the 
graces of his manner, or the careless¬ 
ness and ease, which often proved an 
advantage to those under his sway. 
The short period of four years filled 
up the measure of his iniquity; the 
empire passed to his daughter and 
his son-in-law. William, Prince of 
Orange, had married Mary, the 
daughter of James; and they were 
called to the throne by the parlia¬ 
ment of Great Britain, and the con¬ 
sent of the people. This was a con¬ 
tract between ruler and people, which 
enlarged all the doctrines of the 
Magna Charta, and broke down the 
oft repeated dogma among nations, 
of the divine rights of kings. This 
news arriving in Boston, produced a 
revolution. The colonial tyrant, who 
had strutted his hour, and shown his 
little brief authority, was seized and 
imprisoned, and a council of safety 
created. The former governour, 
Bradstreet, then nearly ninety years 
of age, was made president of the 
council. The other colonies soon 
hailed the change in the British go¬ 
vernment, and acknowledged Wil¬ 
liam and Mary as their rightful sove¬ 
reigns, and were ready to act then- 
part for the dignity and glory of the 
British empire. 

In 1690, commenced the first 
French war, which lasted, with fear¬ 
ful intermissions, until the year 1769, 
a period of almost eighty years. 
Count Frontenac made an incursion 
into the state of New York, and did 
great injury to Schenectady, destroy¬ 
ing the buildings, and also most of 
the inhabitants^ This incensed the 




AMERICAN HISTORY. 


whole country; and New England 
prepared to avenge the insult, and 
chastise the assailants. They now 
began to feel that France, in their 
northern possessions, was to be a 
scourge of New England; and, ” Ca¬ 
nada must be ours, was henceforth 
their motto. The state of Massa¬ 
chusetts armed and equipped a force 
for the reduction of Canada. Sir 
William Phipps, blushing with his 
late honours, was designated the 
commander of the expedition ; but, 
owing to the ten thousand delays in¬ 
cident to fitting out an armed force 
in a new government, he was unable 
to reach Canada until late in the 
autumn; the stormy season coming 
on, he made a failure of it, and his 
fleet returned home without any 
laurels. 

New England was in a state of 
activity and enterprise. Manufac¬ 
tures were carried on far beyond 
what the British knew any thing 
about at this time. The cod fishery 
was full of life and energy; and, at 
the same time, the whale fishery 
commenced at Nantucket on a tole¬ 
rably broad scale. The people of 
Cape Cod had followed this employ¬ 
ment with success for several years 
before, but only on the immediate 
coast. The whalers of Nantucket 
now pushed farther south and north 
than had been done before, and they 
found their account in it. One great 
spirit of enterprise seemed kindled up 
along the sea coast, and to prevail in 
the interiour. 

In 1691, New York was roused to 
a war against the Indians and French 
in Canada; in fact, a perpetual war 
seemed to be determined on, for none 
could foretel when these hostilities 
were to end. Major Schuyler col¬ 
lected a large party of Mohawks, 
passed over Lake Champlain, and 
carried fire and sword into the French 
settlement, showing them that they 
were not to be always assailants. 

In 1692, Sir William Phipps, who 
still’retained his popularity, notwith¬ 
standing his want of success in the 
Canada expedition, came out from 
England with a new charter for Mas¬ 
sachusetts, which, though not pre¬ 
cisely acceptable to those friendly to 
the old charter, was even by them 
considered a tolerably good one. He 
was appointed governour by that in¬ 
strument, and began the duties of his 


293 

office with the good will of a ma¬ 
jority of the people. He was a man 
of strong powers of mind, had all 
that compound spirit of democracy 
and aristocracy which is often found 
in those who suddenly rise in the 
world; who wish to live on terms 
with the great and to secure the 
humble, and are obliged many times 
to play a double game. When the 
learned Mathers wished him to de¬ 
stroy all of a familiar spirit, he gave 
them every assistance. A court was 
appointed by commission, to try all 
witches ; but he found at length that 
he had been duped, and joined to 
stop the current of delusion. This 
infatuation in the end was beneficial, 
for it set men to thinking, and made 
them less confiding in the opinion of 
ecclesiastical leaders. Phipps’s ad¬ 
ministration was short; he was never 
fitted for a statesman or a general, 
but was a good enterprising me- 
chanick. The colony was in great 
jeopardy from the power of Louis 
XIV.; he formed gigantick plans 
which unquestionably were to em¬ 
brace the conquest of all North 
America, from the highest northern 
latitude to the mouth of the Missis¬ 
sippi. Concealing his intentions as 
well as he could, he set about carry 
ing them into effect. He established 
a company for the West Indies to 
exist for fifty years.—This was to be 
one of his instruments to bring about 
his intentions. 

In 1702, William the Third died, 
(Queen Mary having deceased before 
him,) and Anne, Princess of Den 
mark, came to the throne of Eng 
land. Her disposition was good . 
when she erred it was from bad ad¬ 
visers, not from wayward intentions. 
The congratulations on her elevation 
were not made with great spirit, not¬ 
withstanding the people had heard a 
good report of her talents and vir¬ 
tues. But it was a gloomy season ; 
the dread of France was upon every 
mind, and a pestilence was raging 
through many of the principal cities 
and towns. In New York a great 
and sweeping sickness prevailed ; it 
was probably the yellow fever : most 
of those seized with it died, as there 
was not much medical skill in the 
treatment of it at that day. In Bos¬ 
ton, at the same time, the small pox 
was raging, to which many fell vic¬ 
tims. A knowledge of inoculation had 





294 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


not then been brought from the Le¬ 
vant; and modern experience has 
since discovered that the disease was 
improperly treated by the physicians 
of that age. 

The fears entertained of the French 
now began to be realized. In 1704, 
a body of French and Indians made 
an attack upon Deerfield, in Massa¬ 
chusetts ; after massacreing the help¬ 
less inhabitants, and burning the 
town, they set off with such prison¬ 
ers as were able to march; those 
who fainted with fatigue, were re¬ 
lieved by the tomahawk. These 
captives were, a year or two after¬ 
wards, redeemed by their friends or 
by the legislature. In 1708, another 
body of Indians made an attack upon 
Haverhill, situated on the left bank 
of the Merrimack, within thirty miles 
of Boston. The clergyman, Mr. 
Rolfe, was killed by a ball passing 
through the door, which was barred; 
which may now be seen, being a 
double one, without pannels. His 
two infant daughters were preserved 
by the nurse, who fled with them to 
the cellar as soon as she heard the 
alarm, and placed the children under 
two large washing tubs, on the up¬ 
turned bottoms of which, as tradition 
says, she set two pans of milk, from 
which the Indians drank; but the 
children, silenced by fear, were not 
discovered. 

From 1708 to 1713, many abortive 
attempts were made upon Canada, 
and numerous Indian conspiracies 
were formed, but nothing to weaken 
either power happened until the 
treaty of Utrecht. This treaty gave 
the colonies a breathing spell, and 
they began to explore ana survey the 
wilds beyond them ; but tranquillity 
was of short duration. A powerful 
and warlike tribe, in 1715, threatened 
South Carolina with entire destruc¬ 
tion. Vigorous efforts were made to 
repel them, by the governour, who 
was a man of energy. He made a 
levy en masse, of faithful slaves and 
all. The blacks have a strong anti¬ 
pathy to Indians; and, of course, 
made good soldiers in such a war. 
The Yamasses made many desperate 
attacks, but were in the end repulsed 
by Governour Craven,and driven into 
Florida. The people of South Ca¬ 
rolina suffered greatly in this war, 
nearly a third part of the fighting 
men being slain. During this time, 


Pennsylvania was free from Indian 

warfare. If there was no chance in 
this, does it not speak volumes in fa¬ 
vour of William Penn 7 

The pirates who had succeeded the 
bucaniers, were now troublesome 
on the coast of North America: spi¬ 
rited measures were taken by the 
governours of the several states, and 
sometimes with success, to destroy 
them. Bellamy, a pirate, was 
wrecked with his whole fleet, and 
many carcasses were thrown on the 
shores of Cape Cod. A few of hia 
men saved themselves only to perish 
on the gallows in Boston. Bellamy 
had been for some time a terrour to 
all the mariners of New England. 

It is a little remarkable, that the 
two articles, now of the most general 
consumption in the United States, 
potatoes and tea, were not brought 
into the country until about the close 
of the first century from the landing 
of the forefathers of New England. 
A poem, dated at Newton, near Bos¬ 
ton, April, 1717, mentions the fact, 
that China ware and other products 
(unquestionably tea) were brought 
into Boston just before. Dr. Boyls- 
ton allowed it to be drank sparingly 
in 1721, when he inoculated several 
hundred patients for the small-pox. 

Cotton Mather, who had filled a 
great space in the literary, religious, 
and political world, died in the year 
1728. His father, Increase Mather. 
President of Harvard College, died 
not, long before him. These men 
were learned, bigoted, and influen¬ 
tial; and were also useful, though at 
times injurious, to the age in which 
they lived. They diffused know¬ 
ledge, while they scattered errour; 
they gave sound advice, while they 
insisted on the observance of useless 
dogmas. The good they did, lives 
after them, and the evils they were 
guilty of, should be “interred with 
their bones,” so far as our feelings 
extend; but history should write out 
her records fairly. The learned men 
who came from England, when the 
rage of emigration was at the high¬ 
est, were now nearly extinct; a race 
which, for learning, sanctity, perse¬ 
verance, and energy, was never sur- 
assed in the annals of man. They 
ad their errours, but these were, by 
Providence, made subservient to the 
ood of the whole. Education had 
een attended to in the bringing up 






AMERICAN HISTORY. 


295 


of their children of the second gene¬ 

ration, but none of them surpassed 
their fathers. Among those who first 
arrived in this country, were many 
fine Oriental scholars, whose learning 
served only to amuse themselves, or 
to raise the wonder of their flock at 
their acquirements. Hudibras, in 
derision, said of their emigrating to 
this wilderness, that 

“ Hebrew roots are always found 

To flourish best on bairen ground j” 

not applying this, as it has usually 
been, to the intellects of the men who 
love Hebrew, but to the country they 
had chose for a habitation. They 
were men fitted for the times, and 
filled up the measure of their des¬ 
tiny : founders of an empire, they 
saw in prospect its glories, and re¬ 
joiced that they had lived at such a 
period. 

On the 22d of February, 1732, 
George Washington was born in 
Westmoreland, Virginia. At the 
time of his birth, there were twelve 
colonies in America, more or less de¬ 
pendant on England for rulers and 
laws, all claiming privileges and 
immunities by charter. They were 
scattered over an immense territory, 
just beginning to thrive amidst dif¬ 
ficulties and dangers. The whole 
amount of the population of these 
rovinces was not more than eight 
undred thousand, and these not in¬ 
timately acquainted with each other. 
The northern and eastern population 
were thriving upon their agriculture 
and their commerce, yet were cramp¬ 
ed in their manufactures by the severe 
restrictions of the navigation act. 
The staple article of the south was 
then tobacco, and being mostly an 
article of cultivation rather than of 
manufacture, excited no jealousy of 
the northern country. At this time 
the sagacious politician might have 
foreseen many things which have 
since transpired. In the first place, 
the country was sufficiently exten¬ 
sive for the population to increase 
a hundred fold. The seeds of intel¬ 
ligence were well sown in the com¬ 
munity, and the love of indepen¬ 
dence had sprung up—“and like the 
chamomile, the more this spirit is 
trodden on, the more it grows. The 
doctrines of perpetual relations of 
colonies to the mother country, were 
beginning to be questioned, and by 
some critically analyzed. The Eng¬ 


lish were proud and obstinate; and 
their descendants had a good share 
of both of these ingredients in their 
composition. As the former as¬ 
sumed the slightest air of import¬ 
ance, the latter thought it to be a 
duty to check all ambitious views. 
Irritations began on nominal points, 
extended to essentials, and by slow 
degrees alienated the affections of 
the colonies, and increased the con¬ 
sequential air of the mother country. 
From this period till 1775, every day 
was paving the way for the indepen¬ 
dence of the American colonies, and 
in process of time it became indis¬ 
pensable- The next steps taken on 
either side will discover this; and 
every event should be considered as 
leading with a fated directness to 
that measure. The soil was hSld by 
the yeomanry in fee simple, ana 
every one who cultivated an acre 
was lord of his manor. This is the 
foundation of individual indepen¬ 
dence. The laws of property affect 
nations more than the laws that 
govern personal actions. 

In the forty-three years which 
passed from the time of Washington’s 
birth to his taking command of the 
American army, the people had multi¬ 
plied to nearly 3,000,000, a sturdy race 
of hardy men, who had sound minds, 
and those well imbued with the 
great principles of freemen. Wash¬ 
ington was well acquainted with the 
feelings, habits, and powers of the 
people; he knew also the power and 
disposition of England; thus pre¬ 
pared, he drew his sword for the pe¬ 
rilous conflict, and fought it out like 
a man. He was surrounded by those 
who entertained similar sentiments, 
and who wanted nothing of corporeal 
or moral courage. 

Georgia was settled by General 
Oglethorpe, January, 1733. He call¬ 
ed a convention of the Indian Chiefs, 
and made a treaty of friendship with 
them. The Indians at that time 
were numerous. The Cherokees had 
more than six thousand fighting men, 
the Choctaws five thousand, the Up¬ 
per Creeks two thousand five hun¬ 
dred, theChickasaws seven hundred. 
They were warlike nations, and 
lived more compactly than the 
northern tribes. It was owing to 
the forbearance of these lords of the 
soil, that Oglethorpe and his little 
body of 116 persons got foothold in 





296 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


the soil. There has not as yet been 
any full and satisfactory history of 
Georgia. 

In 1735 the Cynanche Maligna 
made its appearance. It broke out 
in May, at Kingston, New Hamp¬ 
shire, and raged in that town during 
the summer. It is said that it was 
first taken by a person who had 
been skinning a hog that died of an 
inflammation in the throat. Of the 
first forty seized, all died. It continued 
with great severity the ensuing win¬ 
ter, and through the next summer; 
more than a thousand died in New 
Hampshire with this scourge of God; 
900 of these were under ten years of 
age. The disease became milder as 
it travelled south. In Boston 4000 
had it, of which number not over 
120 died. A fourth part of all the in¬ 
habitants had the disease; it spread 
all over the colonies. Many years 
have elapsed since a case of the 
“throat distemper” has occurred. 

1741—There were frequent fires in 
the city of New York—the negroes 
•were discovered to be incendiaries; 
thirty were burnt, eighteen were 
hanged, and many were sent off to 
Georgia and other places. This year 
Dr. Franklin began a magazine : the 
work appeared on the 1st of January, 
and was the earliest of the kind 
published in the colonies, and was 
respectable for its literary character. 

1745—The colonies were in a 
flourishing state. The shipping of 
New England alone consisted of 
more than 1000 sail, exclusive of 
fishing craft, which were numerous. 
The other colonies were in great 
prosperity. From the custom-houses 
it was ascertained that Boston was 
then first in commerce, Philadel¬ 
phia second, New York third, 
Charleston fourth, Newport fifth, 
and Perth Amboy sixth. This year 
Louisburgh was taken by the New- 
England troops, assisted by a squad¬ 
ron under Admiral Warren. This 
was a heroick exploit 

1750—Governour Clinton of New- 
York made a treaty with the Indians 
of the Six Nations, at Albany. 

In 1752 the new style was intro¬ 
duced into the colonies. From this 
time, the year, instead of beginning on 
the 25th of March, now commenced 
on the 1st of January. The new 
style began on the 3d of September, 
now called the 14th. Pope Gregory 


XIII. had corrected the calendar 170 
years before, but the protestants 
were slow in adopting a demonstra¬ 
ble truth, as it came from the pope of 
Rome. A tremendous tornado was 
felt at Charlestown about this pe¬ 
riod, and some were bigoted enough 
to believe that it was for changing 
the time according to the calcula¬ 
tions of the pope. 

1755—This yearBraddock march¬ 
ed from Virginia to take Fort du 
Quesne. George Washington of Vir¬ 
ginia, who had resigned his com¬ 
mand of a regiment because he was 
superseded in rank, was invited to 
act as aid to Gen. Braddock, and 
accepted the invitation. The army 
moved on the 10th of June, and 
reached the Monongahela on the 
8th of July; the fight was on the 9th. 
The English were defeated by the 
French and Indians with a very 
small force. The place where they 
fought was an open wood, with high, 
thick grass; and the assailants firing 
on the solid columns of Braddock’s 
army, were almost entirely conceal¬ 
ed. The Virginia militia behaved 
well, and preserved a remnant of the 
army by their coolness .and valour. 
Braddock was mortally wounded, 
and brought off the field on a litter, 
but died the next day in the arms of 
Washington, in Colonel Dunbar’s 
camp. Of eighty-five officers, sixty- 
four were killed or wounded. 

September 8th, 1755, General 
Johnson fought Baron Dieskau near 
Lake George, and defeated him. 
Col. Williams was slain, and also 
the famous Indian warrior Hen¬ 
drick. Baron Dieskau was mortally 
wounded. This success seemed to 
rouse the spirit of the colonies; for 
until this battle, for many years past, 
the French and Indians had been 
victorious. 

On the 19th of November, 1755, 
there was a severe shock of an earth¬ 
quake felt in North America. It de¬ 
molished several old houses, threw 
down several chimneys, and rudely 
shook the steeples of many churches. 
In Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
it was more terrible than in other 
places. 

1757—Montcalm took Fort Wil¬ 
liam Henry, at the southern end of 
Lake George. The garrison, com¬ 
manded by Colonel Munro, made a 
desperate resistance, and did not 





AMERICAN HISTORY. 


capitulate until every shot was 

fked. The garrison was to be al¬ 
lowed the honours of war, and pro¬ 
tection against the Indians until 
within a short distance of Fort Ed¬ 
ward; this was disregarded, and a 
horrible massacre ensued, which has 
left a stain on the otherwise spotless 
fame of the great French general. 

1758— General Abercrombie com¬ 
manded on Lake George. July 5, 
he sailed down the lake on a most 
beautiful day, with nearly sixteen 
thousand troops, English and pro¬ 
vincials, on board of 1025 whale 
boats and batteaux, with a fine train 
of artillery, to attack the French at 
Ticonderoga. The fight was miser¬ 
ably managed. Lord Howe, a gal¬ 
lant officer, was killed, and 2000 of 
the troops, without doing the French 
much injury, they being so well pro¬ 
tected by their works. Lord Howe 
was a great favourite with the Pro¬ 
vincials, and their affection for him 
was carried so far, that Massachu¬ 
setts erected a monument to his 
memory in Westminster Abbey. 
The Rangers, a famous border corps, 
under Rogers, Stark, and others of 
distinction, were in this battle, and 
did all that was effected that day. 
This year died the Rev.' Jonathan 
Edwards, in the 55th year of his age. 
He is considered by all the meta¬ 
physicians of the present day, to have 
possessed as acute a mind as Aristo¬ 
tle. Sir James McIntosh, in his 
great work on Ethicks, has paid him 
a deserved compliment. 

1759— General Amherst succeeded 
Abercrombie. Amherst brought his 
forces against Ticonderoga, and 
Wolfe against Quebec ; both armies 
were successful. Wolfe fell in the 
moment of victory. The French 
were commanded by Montcalm, who 
was^ mortally wounded. The peace 
of 1763 put an end to the French 
power in the North, and hastened 
the settlement of the frontier. 

1761—James Otis was called on 
by the merchants of Boston and Sa¬ 
lem, to argue the question of the con¬ 
stitutionality of the Writs of Assist¬ 
ance, which the custom-house of¬ 
ficers of Boston prayed the supreme 
court to grant, giving them power to 
enter all places and search for goods, 
suspected to have been smuggled 
into the country. His arguments 
set men to thinking uDon the nature 


_ 297 

of their rights, and was more highly 
applauded thau any speech ever de¬ 
livered in the country. Some parts 
of this able argument have been pre¬ 
served by John Adams, who was 
present at the hearing. 

1764— Several anonymous writers 
made their appearance in different 
parts of the country, in defence of 
the rights of the colonies. James 
Otis published a work, under his 
own name, entitled, “The rights of 
the British Colonies asserted and 
proved.” 

1765— The Stamp Act, the first in 
the series of oppression that roused 
the colonies to arms, was passed this 
year. The passage of it was most 
spiritedly opposed by men of talents 
and liberal feelings, in the Houses of 
Commons and of Lords, but to no 
avail. The colonies took fire, and 
the act was every where resisted. 
The distributers of stamps were hung 
in effigy all along the sea-coast. Out 
of these discontents grew prepara¬ 
tions for a national union, which 
was the seed of our national inde¬ 
pendence. The stamp act never 
went into effect; the business re¬ 
quired to be done with stamps, being 
effected by some other method. The 
ministers of the law dared not pro¬ 
ceed, the voice of the people was so 
terrifick. This year, John Adams 
published a “Dissertation on the 
Canon and Feudal Law,” which 
was done for the purpose of aiding 
the liberties of the colonies. It bears 
marks of a strong mind, devoted to 
the cause of the rights of man, and 
though superseded by deeper re¬ 
search since, still it may be read 
with profit now. This year, Doctor 
Franklin was examined before the 
House of Commons, relative to the 
repeal of the stamp act. His an¬ 
swers, and whole conduct, on this 
occasion, is the brightest gem in the 
diadem of his fame. Camden, in 
the House of Lords, reasoned with 
great force in favour of the colonies, 
and William Pitt, afterwards Earl of 
Chatham, in the House of Commons. 
The presses in America were now 
teeming with patriotick addresses, 
and the minds of the colonists kept 
up to fever heat. 

In 1768, associations were formed 
in different states, the members 
pledging themselves not to import 
articles of consumption from Eng- 




298 


____ AMERICAN 

land. This year, the first British 
troops arrived in Boston, and were 
viewed with a jealous eye. The town 
authorities were required to quarter 
these troops ; this was peremptorily 
refused, nor would the council of the 
commonwealth do any thing for 
them. The first regiment was hardly 
provided for by the government, 
when more arrived, and increased 
the disgust of the inhabitants to¬ 
wards the British ministry. 

On the 5th of March, 1770, was 
perpetrated, what has ever since 
been denominated in American his¬ 
tory, the Boston massacre. The 
soldiers, while under arms, in the 
open street, near the custom-house 
of that town, were insulted by the 
populace, pelted with snow balls and 
stones, and dared to fire. One of 
the soldiers fired at a man who had 
thrown some missile at him, and 
six others fired in a few seconds af¬ 
terwards. Three of the inhabitants 
were instantly killed, and five or six 
others were severely wounded, one 
of whom soon after died. The sol¬ 
diers, with their captain, were com¬ 
mitted to prison. The excitement 
was tremendous for some time. The 
trial of Captain Preston and his men, 
did not come on for many months. 
The men were first tried and defend¬ 
ed. on the ground that they stood in 
self-defence, and that they only 
obeyed the law of nature, and this 
sanctioned by the order of their cap¬ 
tain to fire. Six men were acquitted, 
and two found guilty of manslaugh¬ 
ter, who were afterwards slightly 
punished. Preston’s trial came on 
next, and it was satisfactorily proved 
that he gave no orders to fire, and he 
was acquitted. John Adams and 
.Tosiah Quincy were of counsel for 
the prisoners. They were both 
stanch Whigs, and as much in¬ 
censed against the British govern¬ 
ment as any two men in the coun¬ 
try, for sending an army among us ; 
but they were sagacious enough to 
make a distinction between the acts 
of a government, and those of indi¬ 
viduals. Their exertions in these 
trials gained them great credit for 
talents and moral courage; but the 
effect of this shedding of blood, was 
not lost upon the minds of the peo¬ 
ple. This event was commemorated 
by orations for many successive 
years. In this year there was a ] 


f HISTORY. _ 

change in the British ministry; Lord 

North came into power as premier, 
with the avowed intent of carrying 
into effect the measure of taxing the 
colonies, and bringing them to qbe- 
dience by coercion. The concilia¬ 
tory advice of Pitt and Camden was 
wholly disregarded, and all the 
knowledge and predictions of Pow- 
nell treated with contempt. 

In 1772, the Gasper was burnt. 
The British made this a strong pre¬ 
text for complaint; accordingly a 
commission arrived under the great 
seal of England, directed to Gover- 
nour Wanton of Rhode Island, and 
the judges of several of the colonies, 
requiring them to examine into the 
affair, and report the facts to his 
majesty. 

In 1773, the tea question was agi¬ 
tated in Boston. Other parts of the 
act imposing duties was repealed, 
but the duty on tea was continued, 
to show the power of the mother 
country. It was so managed that 
tea came cheaper to the colonies 
than to the mother country, as the 
duty of one shilling sterling was taken 
off all exported to America, and only 
three pence on the pound charged 
when they arrived. This was sup¬ 
posed by North and his coadjutors 
to be a most conciliatory measure; 
but they never took into considera¬ 
tion, that it was the principle, and 
not the amount, against which the 
colonies contended. Three ships 
laden with tea arrived at Boston; 
the masters of the vessels saw the 
opposition, and w r ere willing to return 
home, without breaking bulk, but 
the consignees would not permit 
them to depart. At this juncture, a 
number of men, in the disguise of 
Indians, went on board the tea 
ships, took possession of them, and 
threw all their cargoes overboard. 
This was considered as the most 
gross act of rebellion that had been 
offered to the British ministry ; and 
the question then was, who should 
yield 7 The tea merchants in Eng¬ 
land clamoured for an indemnity 
from the ministry. The ministry 
said that Massachusetts should pay 
for the loss. The colony denied all 
participation in the act, and consi¬ 
dered it as a common loss, for which 
individuals alone were answerable. 
The persons engaged in this trans- 
1 action have never as yet been disco- 







AMERICAN HISTORY. 


299 


vered. The King took alarm at this 

affair, and in his message to parlia¬ 
ment, represented the act as subver¬ 
sive of the government; this en¬ 
couraged the parliament to pass the 
famous Boston Port Bill, a measure 
which virtually struck the port of 
Boston out of the sea-board, as to 
trade and navigation. But this was 
not all; an act followed, by which 
every person, charged with treason, 
was to be sent to England for trial. 
The whole colonies saw that their 
liberties were to be annihilated at a 
blow. It was not one port alone, 
but in their opinion, all ports were 
shut up. They therefore, in opposi¬ 
tion to the measure, made a com¬ 
mon cause, and a spirit of determi¬ 
nation, unknown before, pervaded 
all ranks in society. The question 
was no longer one of ordinary policy, 
but of political existence. Passive 
obedience and non-resristanee could 
alone satisfy the British government. 
The amount of taxes became no¬ 
thing in their eyes; it was alone the 
object to humble or conquer the rest¬ 
less disposition of the people. 

On the 4th of September, 1774, de¬ 
legates from eleven colonies formed 
themselves into a congress at Phila¬ 
delphia, and Peyton Randolph was 
chosen speaker. Each colony had 
but one vote, however large its dele- 
ation. This congress sent loyal ad- 
resses to the King and the people 
of Great Britain, and an appeal to 
the inhabitants of other parts of 
British America. These addresses 
gave proof of the most exalted 
talents and good sense. In Septem¬ 
ber, Governour Gage issued writs for 
the holding a general assembly at 
Salem, but afterwards countermand¬ 
ed his orders by proclamation : the 
members were however chosen, and 
they deemed it expedient to meet, 
notwithstanding the interdict. When 
they were assembled, they found no 
governour, but they resolved them¬ 
selves into a provincial congress, 
and chose John Hancock president. 
Towards the close of this year the 
British government prohibited the 
importation of military stores from 
England to America. This act pro¬ 
duced some commotion in several 
of the states, particularly in New 
Hampshire and Rhode Island. The 
most distinguished men in Virginia 
took alarnriat the encroachments of 


arbitrary power and South Carolina 
was awakened by the address of 
Judge Drayton to the grand jury, 
which was replete with sound and 
liberal doctrines. Virginia was at 
this time vexed with a bloody Indian 
war, but had the good fortune to 
bring it to a close just before the 
revolutionary contest commenced. 
The Ohio Indians had made sad 
havock of the Virginians under 
Colonel Lewis. 

The year 1775, will be an ever 
memorable epoch in American his¬ 
tory. Chatham was still making 
every exertion to bring about a re¬ 
conciliation between Great Britain 
and America, but Lord North had 
the confidence of the King, and the 
control of the parliament, and every 
conciliatory measure was negatived. 
New York petitioned parliament, 
and secured the great talent of Mr. 
Burke in presenting and supporting 
their petition; but all to no avail. 
The King was most pertinaciously 
supported by his ministers, and every 
word and deed were apparently full 
of threats and darkness to the colo¬ 
nies. The drama of the revolution 
was now about to open,—all things 
previously done were but notes of 
preparation. 

On the evening of the 18th of 
April, Dr. Joseph Warren, then 
chairman of the committee of safety 
at Boston, received information that 
Governour Gage was about to send 
a detachment to Concord, 18 miles 
from Boston, for the purpose of ta¬ 
king possession of some military 
stores and provisions deposited there 
by the provincial congress. The 
chairman sent messengers in every 
direction to alarm the country. 
British sentinels and officers were 
scattered upon their rout, to prevent 
any intelligence preceding the de¬ 
tachment; but the messengers, by 
their diligence and skill, eluded them 
all. Eight hundred troops under Lt. 
Col. Smith and Major Pitcairn, em¬ 
barked from Boston Common, and 
landing at Cambridge, took up a si¬ 
lent,expeditious march towards Con¬ 
cord. The troops reached Lexington 
between day and sunrise, on the 
morning of the 19th of April. Pit¬ 
cairn lea the van, and seeing a com¬ 
pany of minute men who were then 
formed in order for exercise, or to act 
as they should receive orders, he, gal- 





300 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


loping up to them, ordered them to 
disperse, calling them rebels , and 
other opprobrious epithets. They 
stood seemingly questioning his 
right to interfere with them on their 
own ground. The major then rode 
to within a rod or two of them, and 
fired his pistol, and waving his 
sword, gave the order to fire. This 
was obeyed by the British soldiers, 
and a discharge of musketry, ac¬ 
companied with huzzas, instantly 
succeeded. Four provincials fell on 
the first fire, and four on the second, 
as the minute men were retreating. 
There were some random shots fired 
in return; but the attack was so 
sudden, that no reuglar opposition 
could be expected. This was the 
signal for the country to rise. Blood 
had been shed; not by accident, not 
in the heat of passion, but in a cool, 
deliberate, settled plan of coercion. 
All scruples then in the minds of the 
colonists gave way. Every one con¬ 
sidered himself bound to assume a 
defensive attitude. The British 
reached Concord about ten o’clock 
in the morning, and took refresh¬ 
ments at the village, while a small 
body of the troops were spiking two 
twenty-four pounders, and throwing 
a few cannon balls into some of the 
wells, and destroying about sixty 
barrels of flour. 

The militia of Concord retired 
over a bridge north of the village. 
Here an active skirmish took place, 
the British firing first as at Lexing¬ 
ton. Smith finding the provincials 
gathering so fast, thought it prudent 
to make tracks (as his pursuers 
called his retreat) towards Boston. 
In this flight, for it could be called 
nothing else, the British troops were 
severely handed. All the militia of 
the neighbouring towns, on horse¬ 
back, and on foot, pursued the fugi¬ 
tives. For the distance of 7 miles, 
from Concord to Lexington, they 
suffered sadly, but here they met 
Lord Percy, with a powerful regi¬ 
ment of 900 strong. The fresh troops 
marched in a hollow square, keeping 
the exhausted ones in their centre. 
The provincials pursued; and, from 
behind stone walls, barns, and 
fences, kept up a galling fire on the 
British. When they reached Bun- 
ker’s-hill, most of the detachment 
rested there for the night, as a great 
portion of the soldiers were unable 


to go any farther. The Somerset 
man-of-war cpvered their position, 
and they were not assailed during 
the night. This was a dear day’s 
work for the British; for according 
to their own account of the battle, 
they lost 65 kille'd, 180 wounded, and 
28 made prisoners, making a total of 
273. The loss of the provincials was, 
50 killed, 24 wounded, 4 missing, 
total 78. This excursion for amuse¬ 
ment, as Pitcairn had called it when 
it was projected, taught the British 
what to expect from exasperated 
yeomanry. This battle was truly the 
first scene, in the first act, of the 
revolutionary drama. It gave proof 
that others besides grenadiers could 
play a part in the tragedy of war. 
An account of this battle was sent to 
England, and soon reached, by ex¬ 
press, every part of America. Twenty 
thousand armed men seemed to 
spring, as it were, from the ground as 
avengers of blood, and asserters of 
the rights of men. Col. Buttrick was 
commander of the day at Lexington 
and Concord, but in fact every man 
fought on his own account and risk. 
Warren was in the fight, and a curl 
of’his wig was carried away by a 
musket ball. 

The British were now closely shut 
up in Boston, not daring to look out 
of the limits of the town. Fresh 
troops soon after arrived under 
Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne, which 
augmented their forces to nearly six 
thousand men. 

The American army had been 
quartered at Cambridge nearly two 
months, and no blow had been struck 
to rid the country of the British 
troops, or to encourage the people; 
some uneasiness seemed to exhibit 
itself in the camp and abroad, that 
more energy was not shown; but 
the wise thought to conquer by Fa¬ 
bian wisdom, while others were for 
more decisive measures. The army 
at Cambridge was known to be 
large enough to demolish the Bri¬ 
tish, if they could but get at them. 
In this state of feeling, it was deem¬ 
ed proper to make some demonstra¬ 
tions of courage, and to show inten¬ 
tions of acting offensively and fear¬ 
lessly. Col. Prescott was sent with 
the fragments, or rather the skele¬ 
tons of three regiments, on the night 
of the 16th of June, to occupy a sta¬ 
tion on Bunker’s-hill. On viewing 





AMERICAN HISTORY. 


the eminence, properly called Bun- 

ker’s-hill, he found it not an elligible 
spot. Then looking along to the 
right, he saw that a spur of the same 
hill, now called Breed’s-hill, was the 
most proper in every respect for a 
battle ground. Considering that 
they were within the limits of their 
orders, Prescott and Col. Gridley, 
the engineers, began a redoubt on 
the right of Breed’s-hill. It was about 
140 feet square, with two open pas¬ 
sages for ingress and egress. On 
the left of the redoubt, running north¬ 
easterly, was a breastwork of sods, 
not much over four feet high, which, 
however, did not, as has been stated, 
reach Mystick river, not extending 
one quarter of the way to it. The 
line from this breastwork was made 
of two posts, and rail fences placed 
about four feet apart in parallel lines, 
and between them was newly mown 
grass, making quite as good a screen 
for the militia, as the redoubt for the 
breastwork. General Ward, con¬ 
cluding from the firing from the 
summit of Copp’s-hill, in Boston, 
that the British would make a strug¬ 
gle to get possesion of the works, 
offered to relieve Prescott and'his 
men, but they unanimously declined 
the offer, yet earnestly insisted on a 
reinforcement. These were reluc¬ 
tantly given, as the commander-in¬ 
chief thought that an attack on his 
camp was contemplated, as it was a 
better place for a general action than 
Bunker’s-hill, and in such a case he 
would be but indifferently fortified. 
Early in the morning, from the bat¬ 
tery on Copp’s-hill, one of the men 
in or near the redoubt was killed and 
buried on the spot; although the 
roar of the cannon from this eminence 
was incessant, no further injury was 
done by their shots: and in aid of 
this battery, the Lively man-of-war 
was brought to bear, and in fact 
she began the cannonade at early 
dawn. Gage, wishing to drive the 
Provincials from the hill, sent Major 
General Howe and Brigadier Gene¬ 
ral Pigot, with ten companies of 
grenadiers and ten of light infantry, 
and some artillery, to perform this 
service. These generals reconnoiter- 
ing the American army, on their arri¬ 
val at Morton’s point, where the navy 
yard at Charlestown now stands, 
thought it best to wait for a reinforce¬ 
ment from Boston. Howe waited 
Z 


_301 

for them, from about noon until af¬ 

ter three o’clock, before the battle 
was commenced. The British be¬ 
gan a slow march up the hill in 
two lines, stopping at times to give 
the artillery a chance to play; but the 
angle of elevation was such that it 
did but little execution. The Pro¬ 
vincials wasted no ammunition; 
they had but a scanty supply, and 
were ordered to put four buck-shot 
to a bullet, and to reserve their fire 
until the enemy was at blank shot 
distance, and then to pour in upon 
them a volley. The effect was not 
more destructive than appalling. The 
British soldiery, expecting nothing 
but random shots, from undisciplined 
militia, were astounded at such 
deadly fires. The British lines broke 
in confusion; some companies had 
not twenty soldiers fit for duty when 
they were about to rally. The Bri¬ 
tish officers had the greatest dif¬ 
ficulty in bringing their troops again 
into line, andf a second time they 
came towards the works, though 
with some wavering, and in less 
than fifteen minutes they retreated 
in still greater confusion than before. 
Clinton saw this from Boston, and 
hastened over to assist Howe. Both 
the generals addressed the soldiers— 
called to mind their former wreaths 
of glory—and expatiated largely 
upon the everlasting stain that 
would attach to them in being beat¬ 
en by raw militia. Howe swore to 
them, that he would never survive 
the disgrace, if they were beaten 
that day. By this time Charles¬ 
town, consisting of four hundred 
houses, was in a blaze. This was 
done by Clinton, to terrify the neigh¬ 
bouring army. On the third attack, 
they were under the necessity of re¬ 
sorting to their military skill, not 
daring to risque the event on the 
score of bravery. Pigot, with a con¬ 
siderable force, took a circuitous 
rout around the south side of the 
hill, then came upon the south west¬ 
ern angle of the redoubt, and in¬ 
stantly scaled the slight works. Pit¬ 
cairn was with him, and was shot 
through the body, as he was about 
to leap into the redoubt. Pigot be¬ 
ing a short man, was lifted by his 
soldiers upon the sods, from whence 
he jumped into the area without 
harm. The provincials were now 
attacked on the east and west; their 




302_ AMERICAN 

ammunition was exhausted ; they 

had few or no bayonets, but after 
beating their assailants with the 
butts of their guns, Prescott ordered 
a retreat. Those at the breastwork 
retreated, and those at the rail fence 
followed. Tfie Americans retreated 
over Charlestown neck northward ; 
and until the commencement of the 
retreat, but few of them had been 
killed : their unwillingness to leave 
the ground, at the proper season, 
was the cause of the considerable 
numbers of the killed and wounded. 
Captain Knowlton, who had a fine 
large company, near Mystick river, 
moved up in good order, and cover¬ 
ed the retreat of those from the re¬ 
doubt and the breastwork. The bat¬ 
tle was ended between five and six 
o’clock. The wind, during the fight, 
bein'* brisk and westerly, blew the 
smoke directly in the enemy’s face, 
and as the smoke arose over the 
heads of the British, the Americans 
as it were, looking under the cloud, 
saw where to fire. Prescott, during 
all the fight, was in the redoubt; the 
other portion of the Massachusetts 
militia were at the breastwork. The 
New Hampshire troops, under Stark, 
Dearborn, and others, were at the 
rail fence. They were marching 
from their native state towards Cam¬ 
bridge, and went on the battle 
ground from their own impulse, not 
having received any orders from the 
commander-in-chief. The British 
had between three and four, thou¬ 
sand in tlmfight. They acknowledged 
1054 killed and wounded, with a 
great proportion of officers. Their 
numbers slain was most unquestion¬ 
ably larger than acknowledged ; for 
they brought between three and four 
hundred corpses, and buried them in 
the corner of a new burying ground 
at the bottom of the common in 
Boston ; the others were buried on 
Breed’s-hill, where they fell. The 
American force was stated to be fif¬ 
teen hundred, but perhaps there 
were a few more at times, as volun¬ 
teers came on the ground, expended 
their ammunition, and retreated, 
when they could do no more service 
to the country. The Provincials had 
139 killed, and 314 wounded and 
missing, forming a total of 453. 

The American officers that fell 
were, Col. Gardener of Cambridge, 
Lt. Col. Parker of Chelmsford, and 


HISTORY'. ____ 

Majors Moore and M‘Cleary, all men 
of distinction and’ value, and heroes 
in the cause ; and to these we must 
add Major General Joseph Warren. 
Some of these officers had parts of 
regiments under their command, and 
some were volunteers on the hill. 
General Pomeroy fought with Spar¬ 
tan bravery; he saw where his coun¬ 
trymen were, and then advanced to 
the fight. 

Warren took no command .that 
day. He had been but four days pre¬ 
viously commissioned as a Major 
General by the Provincial Congress, 
nor had he in fact been sworn into 
office, except as every patriot had, an 
oath in Heaven, to live free or die. 
Warren was, at the moment of his 
fall, president of the Provincial Con¬ 
gress, and chairman of the commit¬ 
tee of safety. He had put some one 
in the chair, and mounted his horse 
at Watertown, where the legislative 
body were in session, to come and 
encourage his fellow citizens in the 
fight. When he entered the redoubt, 
Prescott offered him the command, 
but he declined it, saying, “I come 
to learn war under an experienced 
soldier, not to take any command.” 
He became the martyr of that day’s 
glory. His death was deplored as a 
great calamity to the cause and to 
the nation. He was in the prime of 
life, only thirty-five years of age,*_a 
spirit as bold and dauntless as ever 
was blazoned in legends or recorded 
in history. He was a prudent and 
cautious, but a fearless statesman ; 
made to govern men, and to breathe 
into them a portion of his own hero_- 
ick soul. His eloquence was of a 
high order—His voice was fine, and 
he could modulate it at his will. His 
appearance had the air of the soldier, 
graceful and commanding, united to 
the manners of a finished gentleman. 
The British thought that nis life was 
of the utmost importance to the 
American army; indeed of so much 
importance, that they supposed they 
would no longer hold together after 
his fall. They sadly mistook the 
men they had. to deal with. His 
blood was not shed in vain; is cried 
from the ground for vengeance , and 
his name became a watchword in 
the hour of peril and glory. 

The humblest individual, who pe¬ 
rished in that fight, was a substantial 
' yooman or an industrious mechanick 






_ AMERICAN 

They were owners of the soil for 
which they fought. The battle scene 
was imposing. The ground was in 
the neighbourhood of a city, whose 
inhabitants were watching the pro¬ 
gress of events, anxious for the near¬ 
est friends ; while the roar of cannon 
from ships of war, and from floating 
and stationary batteries, was follow¬ 
ed or commingled with incessant 
volleys of musketry ; a well built, 
compact town was seen in one mass 
of flames, and all this was thought 
but the commencement of troubles— 
was a sight which was appalling to 
every American, and seemed to shake 
even the enemy, mind and soul to¬ 
gether. The British troops, in consi¬ 
derable force, occupied the hill that 
night, and enlarged the redoubt to 
nearly twice the original extent; but 
they did not venture to light their 
fires ; they laboured by the sinking, 
flickering lights, which shot up from 
the mouldering ruins of Chafles- 
town. 

For us, struggling for liberty, the 
event of this battle was most for¬ 
tunate. They had done enough for 
honour; enough to produce an im¬ 
pression of their prowess on the 
minds of their enemies; enough to 
give them confidence in themselves; 
and they had learnt something in 
the way of preparing themselves to 
correct their errours of judgement in 
planning a fight. They had suffered 
enough to feel their loss deeply, yet 
not enough to weaken their forces. 
The wounds they had received were 
too deep to be healed at once; the 
sight was too awful to be soon for¬ 
gotten. If the army had come down 
from Cambridge and Roxbury, the 
British would nave been altogether 
destroyed; but, with the disposition 
of the king of England at this period, 
and the spirit ofnie ministry, the 
whole force of the British nation 
would have been brought to crush us 
at once. The great mistake made 
by them was that of undervaluing 
their enemies. 

It is idle for us now to quarrel 
about each one’s share of glory in 
the fight, where all were brave— 
Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Gridley, 
Dearborn, and all, performed their 
duty—and who could do more in 
such a case. Some complaints 
were made to the commander-in¬ 
chief, and several officers were ar- 


HI STORY. _303 

rested and tried for misconduct and 
cowardice. Among these, was one 
case which deserves particular men¬ 
tion. Captain Benjamin Callender 
commanded a company of artillery^', 
and was seen coming from the hill 
without his men; in fact, finding 
their ammunition spent, they had re¬ 
treated contrary to the captain’s or¬ 
ders. In the excitement of the mo¬ 
ment, the court pronounced Callen¬ 
der guilty of cowardice. His soul 
revolted at the charge, and all who 
knew him could not believe it true. 
He bore his disgrace with that mo¬ 
ral fortitude, which is generally of 
a higher character than personal 
bravery. He instantly enlisted as a 
common soldier into the company he 
had commanded, and followed the 
fortunes of the war. The soldiers 
treated him with great respect, as 
did the officers of tne company also, 
believing him to be a brave and an 
honourable man. It was not long 
before he had a chance to show the 
spirit that was in him. In the course 
of a few campaigns, Callender had 
an opportunity to distinguish him¬ 
self; for when his commanders were 
dead, or had retreated, he in face of 
the enemy loaded and fired his piece 
alone, and when his ammunition 
failed, and the enemy advanced upon 
him, he mounted his piece, in order 
to be found a victim on it, to give the 
lie to his unjust sentence. The Bri¬ 
tish officer who led up those about 
to take possession of the artillery, 
noticed the gallant conduct of the 
artillerist; prevented his men from 
firing on the unarmed and solitary 
hero, took him under his care, gave 
him a letter to General Washington 
stating the facts, and dismissed nim 
without an exchange. The chieftain 
received Callender with open arms, 
and with tears of joy restored his 
commission, allowing him to take 
rank from its original date before the 
battle of Bunker’s-hill. Callender re¬ 
mained in the army after the peace, 
being one of the few retained by the 
old congress, and he died in the 
service on the peace establishment. 
Have we not parallels for every epi¬ 
sode of history ? Of many of these 
we must say, as has been said in an¬ 
cient times of some of the brave and 
good—“ they had no poet , and they 
died.” 

Bunker’s-hill has now become con- 






304 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


secrated ground; it has not only 
been the Dattle-field, but it is now 
publick property. Fifty years after it 
had drunk the blood of friends and 
foes, the ground was consecrated by 
eloquence and patriotism, and glori¬ 
fied by the presence of the remnants 
of that day—the 17th of June, 1775— 
beings of a former generation, who 
hung upon society as the leaves of 
those evergreens which seem to dis¬ 
appear without dying, only making 
room for new buddings and new ex¬ 
pansions. The ravages of time make 
the treasures of a nation’s fame. Let 
us garner up our notices of past ages, 
ana preserve them in the archives of 
the country : we shall please and in¬ 
struct ourselves by so doing, and 
make posterity lastingly indebted to 
us for the deed. To transmit the 
honours of one age to another is our 
duty; to neglect the merits of our 
fathers is a disgrace. 

Washington, who was appointed 
on the 15th of June, reached the 
American camp on the 2d of July, 
1775. He was anxiously looked for. 
The body of men collected at Cam¬ 
bridge were fine materials for an 
army, but there was little military 
knowledge and less subordination. 
On the 5th of July, Washington is¬ 
sued his general order. It is a com¬ 
position displaying good talents, 
though not so easy in its style as his 
subsequent orders. It was then, 
however, admired as a most wonder¬ 
ful production. The soul of the great 
man was seen, as it were, brooding 
over this military chaos, and bring¬ 
ing substantial and beautiful forms 
to light. The heights surrounding 
Boston were at once fortified and put 
in a military posture; and he showed 
the British what a sagacious mind 
could do, even if he had not waded 
through a field of blood. He soon 
perceived there was almost a total 
want of bayonets and munitions of 
war in the army. The muskets were 
in good condition as fowling pieces, 
but there were but few bayonets, ana 
no uniformity in calibre. Some were 
king’s arms, some French pieces 
taken in the different wars, and some 
Dutch guns bought ages before. To 
supply the necessary munitions of 
war was a prime desideratum ; and, 
understanding that several ships 
were bound to Canada, loaded with 
the necessary articles, the com¬ 


mander-in-chief gave commissions 
to several privateers to cruise against 
the English government ships, and 
capture them wherever found. This 
was the boldest act of this great 
man’s life, and, like the rest, it was 
successful. He was soon aided by 
the provincial congress of Massa¬ 
chusetts, w r ho also fitted out pri¬ 
vateers this season, and formed ad¬ 
miralty courts for themselves. 

Before the declaration of inde¬ 
pendence, 34 valuable prizes had 
been taken, many of them being 
laden with the precise articles which 
were wanted. A distinction was 
made between the property of the 
nation and of individuals; as several 
prizes which were owned by mer¬ 
chants in England were released af¬ 
ter capture, and restored to the 
owners. The prudence of Wash¬ 
ington, even more than his great 
talents, inspired confidence in this 
sagacious people. His troops were 
frequently changed while within 
point blank shot of the enemy forti¬ 
fied on Bunker’s-hill, and yet they did 
not perceive the fact. The six-month 
men retired, and new recruits took 
their places, and all was managed with 
so much circumspection, that it was 
not discovered when the old departed, 
and the new came in. He was 
anxious to do something this sum¬ 
mer campaign, which could not be 
done without risking the safety of 
the town of Boston, which was a 
subject for mature consideration, as 
the war might close in an hour, and 
the destruction of so important a 
place would be severely felt. 

During this period, Ticonderoga, 
and Crownpoint, were taken by the 
troops under Colonels Allen and Ar¬ 
nold. 

In the fall, congress had reason 
to believe that Sir Guy Carleton 
would attack our frontier from 
Canada, and to give him employ¬ 
ment at home, a plan was laid to 
attack Canada. Montgomery, who 
was an experienced general, and a 
most gallant soldier, was sent by 
way of Lake Champlain to invade 
Lower Canada. Troops were at 
the same time to be sent from Cam¬ 
bridge by w r ay of the river Kenne- 
beck, to meet those coming from 
New York, to form a junction for 
the purpose of attacking the city of 
Quebeck. The command was given 





AMERICAN HISTORY. 


305 


by Washington, to Benedict Arnold, 

who was made a brigadier general. 
This was a most arduous campaign. 
The troops suffered extraordinary 
hardships, from hunger, cold, and 
sickness, but the soul of enterprise 
was in this hardy band of yeomen, 
who feared nothing but slavery. 
The attack was made on the city of 
Quebeck on the last day of the year 
1775. It was carried on with daring 
bravery, but proved unsuccessful. 
Montgomery was slain, and Arnold 
wounded. 

On the 4th of July, 1776, the con¬ 
tinental congress declared the thir¬ 
teen United States to be free, sove¬ 
reign, and independent. As we have 
given quite a full and explicit ac¬ 
count of this event in the third part 
of our Treasury of Knowledge, we 
shall here let the subject pass, with 
this passing remark, that it was an 
act of a high and important charac¬ 
ter, and if the reader will refer to 
that part of the work, he will find a 
succinct biography of all the signers 
of this memorable instrument. 

The politicians had taken a bold 
step, but our armies were unsuccess¬ 
ful during the summer and autumn, 
and from every quarter gloomy ac¬ 
counts were received. At the close 
of the year, the battle of Trenton en¬ 
livened the spirits of the people, fol¬ 
lowed as it was by that of Princeton. 

The world now perceived that 
Washington was a military chief¬ 
tain of a high order. The colonists 
saw that the British army were nu¬ 
merous; twenty-five thousand men, 
of the flower of Europe, were now 
in our country, and must be driven 
out before American Independence 
could be sustained. The battle of 
Brandywine did not dispirit the 
Americans, although after hard 
fighting they were obliged to retreat. 
The battles of Germantown and 
Redbank were only so many lessons 
to teach them the art of fighting, 
and had the effect of rousing their 
spirit. In the autumn of 1777, an 
army was sent to stop the pro¬ 
gress of General Burgoyne, who 
marched from Canada by the way 
of Lake Champlain, to join the Bri¬ 
tish forces in New York ; Ticonde- 
roga was yielded to the British with¬ 
out any resistance,and the retreating 
army was sadly cut up. Burgoyne 
proceeded victoriously, until the de¬ 


feat of Count Baum, at Benning* 

ton, by the New Hampshire troops, 
under the command of General 
Stark. Breyman, who came to as¬ 
sist Baum, was obliged to retreat to 
the main body. Burgoyne now 
made a great effort to accomplish 
his purpose, but the American militia 
flocked to the army under Gates, 
and on the 19th of September a 
spirited engagement took place, the 
details of which are very interesting, 
and have been given to. the world by 
some of the actors in the scene which 
they described; Burgoyne, and the 
Baroness of Reidesel, are conspicu¬ 
ous among them. Both armies 
fought well; both lodged that night 
in their own camps; and both suffer¬ 
ed severely. After this battle, his In¬ 
dian allies deserted the British com¬ 
mander; this was a sad omen. The 
next battle was fought on the 7th of 
October, which terminated in the 
surrender of Burgoyne and his whole 
forces. Thus a British army, of 
more than ten thousand men, was 
forced from the field of action, and 
the victorious American troops were 
allowed to turn their attention to 
other quarters. This disaster aroused 
General Clinton to proceed up the 
Hudson from the city of New York, 
and make an attack on forts Mont¬ 
gomery and Clinton. These miser¬ 
able works vvere bravely defended by 
Governor Clinton; but he could not 
resist the force brought against him. 

This year articles of confederation 
were formed by thirteen colonies as¬ 
sembled in congress, and the style 
of the confederation was to be, the 
“United States of America. 5 ’ Every 
movement, after this time, became 
national; and France, which had 
hitherto delayed joining the cause 
of American Independence openly, 
now came out boldly. The national 
flag of the young republick was fixed 
upon. Congress now refused to 
listen to any propositions which 
; were not based upon an acknow¬ 
ledgement of independence. The 
defeat of Burgoyne was in a short 
time known to all the great powers 
of Europe, and it was thought, on 
the continent, that America would 
succeed in her momentous struggle. 
Much was to be done, but all fear of 
her being defeated had subsided. In 
1778, was fought the battle of Mon¬ 
mouth, remarkable for its com- 




306 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


mencement and termination. Suc¬ 
cess had flitted from one standard to 
the other, during the day. The 
Americans claimed the victory as 
they slept on their arms in the field 
of battle, and the British departed 
that night. 

In the summer of this year, a 
French fleet arrived to assist the 
United States, but was not of much 
service, as affairs were managed. 
The French monarch also sent an 
ambassador to this country. 

The massacre at Wyoming was 
perpetrated at the close of this sea¬ 
son. It was said to have been done 
under the command of Col. Butler, 
a refugee, and Brandt, a half-blooded 
Indian. But, within a few years, the 
son of Brandt has vindicated his fa¬ 
ther’s memory, and proved to the 
satisfaction of many historians, that 
he was not there at the time the 
bloody deed was done. 

In 1779, the war was carried on in 
the south—a desperate attack was 
made on Savannah, by the French, 
under Count D’Estaing, and the 
Americans, which proved unsuccess¬ 
ful, and with great loss of lives. In 
the attack, fell the Polish Count 
Pulaski. He was the “bravest of 
the brave.” His life had been full 
of adventures. He had been at the 
head of a revolution in his own 
country, and performed prodigies of 
valour, but without success. His 
deeds have been blazoned in fiction 
and verse—his whole character was 
epick. 

This year is also memorable for 
many other events. The Penobscot 
fleet, under Commodore Saltonstall, 
was lost. This was a sad blow to 
Massachusetts; at a heavy expense 
she had fitted out the expedition. 

The six nations of Indians, who 
had become troublesome by their 
savage incursions', were chastised 
by General Sullivan, their country 
overrun, and their corn fields de¬ 
stroyed. The Indians, under Brandt, 
made several desperate attempts to 
avenge themselves, and did consider¬ 
able injury in the neighbourhood of 
Albany; but their strength was 
wasted, and their courage gone. 

About this time a settlement was 
commenced at Lexington, in Ken¬ 
tucky, which, to use the language of 
the red man, was “ the first seed of 
a big tree.” 


In 1780, the war raged with great 
fury in the southern states; victory 
first favouring one side, and then the 
other, but nothing decisive was 
done. Baron De Kalb was slain at 
the battle of Camden. He was by 
birth a German, but had been many 
years in the French service, and was 
esteemed an intelligent and brave 
officer. 

This year was also marked by the 
treachery of Arnold, and the death 
of Andre—events in the annals of 
the revolution, never to be forgotten. 
History and fiction have taken them 
in keeping, and have given every mi¬ 
nute circumstance of the affair—Ar¬ 
nold is execrated—Andre loved and 
pitied. 

1781—This year General Greene 
took command of the southern army; 
in the early part of it was fought tne 
battle of tne Cowpens, which termi¬ 
nated in a brilliant victory, on the 
part of the Americans. General 
Morgan and Colonel Washington 
gained new laurels by their gallant 
bearing on that day. 

In all the attacks and retreats of 
this year, the British generals, Lords 
Cornwallis and Rawdon, and the 
American generals, Greene, Marion, 
and in truth every other officer 
intrusted with command, showed 
themselves worthy of their stations. 
The battle of Eutaw Springs, fought 
on the 8th of September of this 
year, was desperately contested, but 
proved successful on the part of the 
Americans. 

On the 14th of October, two Bri¬ 
tish redoubts were taken at York 
Town; and on the 19th of the same 
month, Lord Cornwallis surrendered 
to Washington. This victory set¬ 
tled the great question of the longer 
continuation of British power. 

There were some evidences of re¬ 
venge, rather than of power, after 
this. The traitor Arnold made a 
predatory excursion into Virginia, 
and returning to the north, burnt 
New London, took Fort Trumbull 
and Fort Griswold, and acted the 
part of a vindictive barbarian, whose 
soul all honour had deserted. 

In South Carolina, the scenes of 
tyranny and oppression were going 
on. Colonel Hayne was executed 
by order of Lora Rawdon, which 
exasperated the whigs of the south, 





_AMERICAN HISTORY. 307 

and urged them to retaliate on every war, and national suicide, were fear- 
tor y* ed to be close at hand. This con- 


The year 1782 was memorable for 
the acknowledgement of American 
independence by the United Pro¬ 
vinces of Holland. In addition to 
this, Mr. Adams negotiated with 
them a loan of several millions, 
then much wanted in the United 
States. 

On the 14th of December, Charles¬ 
ton was evacuated by the British. 
The war was now virtually closed. 

In 1783, peace revisited the weary 
colonies. Their independence was 
acknowledged by Great Britain, and 
by several of the great powers of 
Europe. Washington disbanded his 
army, and repairing to Annapolis, 
where Congress were then sitting, 
resigned his commission, which he 
had held nearly eight years, with 
glory to himself, and honour to his 
country. 

The peace being established, the 
good and patriotick who had labour¬ 
ed for this momentous event, now 
felt great anxiety for the general 
welfare of the country. The pres¬ 
sure of war was no longer felt, but 
the exhaustion produced by protract¬ 
ed exertion was severe. In several 
of the states, a spirit of enterprise 
was discovered—Pennsylvania and 
Massachusetts established banks; 
in New York a chamber of com¬ 
merce was instituted; and a show 
of business was made in many other 
places;—but still there was such a 
want of union of purpose and ac¬ 
tion, that a more closely connected 
union became indispensable. To 
form a government that would give 
concentration, energy, and dignity 
to the nation, was the desire and 
study of every thinking man in the 
whole community. In several of the 
states, symptoms of an insurrec¬ 
tionary spirit were seen; and in 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire 
they broke out into overt acts, but 
the insurgents were soon put down, 
and quiet, if not harmony, was re¬ 
stored. The national debt laid heavy 
upon the confederation, and they 
had no means of paying it off, or 
even the interest of it. A conven¬ 
tion was called to form a constitu¬ 
tion that would remedy the evils 
^complained of, which had now be¬ 
come alarming—bankruptcy, civil 


vention grew out of a proposition of 
Virginia to the other states. The 
deliberations of this body were trans¬ 
mitted to the people of the several 
states for their acceptance. After 
many difficulties, the system of go¬ 
vernment offered to the people was 
adopted; and in 1789 the new con¬ 
stitution went into operation. Wash¬ 
ington was elected president, and 
John Adams vice-president, of the 
United States; both patriots, who 
had a strong hold on the affections 
of the people, for their talents, pro¬ 
bity, and services ; and their charac¬ 
ters inspired a confidence throughout 
the Union, which also spread to 
many foreign powers, who, after re¬ 
ceiving the inaugural address of 
George Washington, were prompt 
in making treaties with the new re- 
publick. The appointments of Wash¬ 
ington were most judicious; great 
and good men were put into places 
of trust and importance. New life¬ 
blood was infused into the body poli¬ 
tick, and hope and confidence filled 
every bosom. The wilderness was 
explored—institutions of learning 
grew up—and commerce was ex¬ 
tended to every sea. The great 
publick functionaries declared that 
“ knowledge and virtue were alone 
the sure basis of human happiness, 
and that men, to act wisely, must 
understand their duties and their 
rights.” One difficulty after another 
vanished; and Washington retired, 
after two presidential terms of four 
years, leaving the country in pros¬ 
perity. 

In 1797, Mr. Adams was elevated 
to the office of chief magistrate. 
France was now in the confusion 
following her revolution, and she 
made improper demands on our 
country, and not being so speedily 
answered as she instantly required, 
commenced seizing American pro¬ 
perty on the high sea. Letters of 
marque and reprisal were issued by 
the government of the United States, 
and such was the promptitude of our 
marine, that peace was soon es¬ 
tablished. The frontiers on the 
west were vexed with Indian war¬ 
fare, and often the arms of the re- 
publick were not sufficient to keep 
these fearful foes at a proper dis¬ 
tance; but at length being severely 






303 


AMERICAN HISTORY. 


chastised by General Wayne, they 
sued for peace. 

In 1800 the seat of government 
was removed from Philadelphia to 
Washington, a new city, which had 
been designated by Washington, un¬ 
der a law of Congress, a central si¬ 
tuation for the representatives of the 
different states of the Union. 

In 1801, a great change was pro¬ 
duced in the national opinions of the 
people of the United States. Mr. 
Jefferson had been chosen to suc¬ 
ceed Mr. Adams, and a change of 
men was followed by a change of 
measures. Mr. Jefferson was by 
nature and practice, a lover of peace, 
and struggled hard to maintain it in 
his time. At this period, Louisiana 
had been ceded by Spain to France. 
Up to this time, the Americans had 
used the port of New Orleans as one 
open to their commerce, which gave 
them facilities on the western wa¬ 
ters. France ordered this port to 
be closed. Some of the American 
statesmen thought this sufficient 
cause of war, and were in favour of 
taking the port by force of arms; 
while others w r ere for settling the 
whole dispute by negotiation. Mr. 
Jefferson was of the latter opinion, 
and in 1803 he purchased it for the 
United States, at the price of fifteen 
millions of dollars; but before this 
purchase, the port of New Orleans 
was open to our commerce. This 
was a most fortunate bargain, as it 
has proved, giving the country a 
large property for a small sum of 
money, comparatively speaking. 
The territory wqs speedily taken 
possession of, and American enter¬ 
prise took the place of Spanish slug¬ 
gishness. 

The whole country received a 
new impulse, and after a few years, 
the most determined opposer of the 
purchase was silent on the policy of 
the measure. Mr. Jefferson pursued 
his course, secure of the majority of 
the people; but an intelligent and 
powerful minority was still against 
him, and his course of policy. One 
cause of objection to him wus his 
supposed opposition to the navy—for 
soon after his coming to the chair, 
the Barbary powers showed a dis¬ 
position to take advantageof our sup¬ 
posed want of a naval force, and 
made high demand of tribute. A 
portion of our navy w’as sent into the 


Mediterranean with instructions to 

protect our commerce, and to save 
our citizens from imprisonment; but 
this was not sufficient; a course 
more energetick was necessary to 
vindicate our national honour, and 
to secure the prosperity of our mer¬ 
chants. These piratical hordes had 
been the scourge of Christendom fot 
ages. They had made the nations 
of Europe tributary to them for 
many centuries. They had plun¬ 
dered merchants trafficking in the 
Mediterranean, and made slaves of 
their prisoners. They had swept the 
Adriatick, depredated on the coast 
of Spain and Italy, and in fact, at 
times, had the control of the whole 
Levant. These pirates were so chas¬ 
tised by our navy, that it produced in 
them a disposition for peace. Our 
naval officers acquired much glory 
in this war. Even his holiness the 
Pope, acknowledged that the young 
republick had done more towards 
repressing these pirates in a few 
years, than all Europe had effected 
for centuries. The furious Corsair 
was now found to be a less terrifick 
foe, than had been imagined. He 
wanted that skill which could not be 
supplied by a fanatical bravery. 

The commerce of the United 
States, notwithstanding all its em¬ 
barrassments, continued to flourish 
until 1807, when our difficulties com¬ 
menced with France and England, 
which grew out of the English orders 
in council, the Berlin ana Milan de¬ 
crees, and the attack by the British 
ship Leopard upon the American fri¬ 
gate Chesapeake. This caused the go¬ 
vernment of the United States to lay 
a general embargo. This was a se¬ 
ver^ and inefficacious measure, and 
was with difficulty carried into effect. 
One irritation followed another, until, 
in June,1812, war was declared by the 
United States against Great Britain. 
A great proportion of the population 
on the sea board were opposed to 
the war, and a strong protest was 
entered by the minority in congress 
against it. 

The early part of the war was dis¬ 
astrous to the American arms. Ge¬ 
neral Hull was under the necessity 
of surrendering his army to the 
British. Almost at the same time, 
his nephew, Captain Hull, of the 
navy, achieved a victory in the cap¬ 
ture of the Guerriere* which revived 





_ AMER ICAN 

the spirits of the nation, for they had 
in general believed that glory was 
not to be gained in this contest at 
sea, but it happened otherwise. 

This capture was soon followed 
by others, in which equal gallantry 
was evinced. Captain Jones, of the 
Wasp, took the Frolick; Captain 
Decatur took the Macedonian ; and 
Captain Bainbridge the Java. 

American privateers were fitted 
out, and although property was their 
great object, yet some very splendid 
actions were fought by them. The 
schooner Dolphin, carrying only 
two guns, under the command of 
Captain Endicott, captured a British 
ship of 14 guns. The war now be¬ 
gan to wear a serious aspect. There 
was nothing but disappointment on 
the frontiers ; for if now and then a 
brilliant action was fought, the ad¬ 
vantage was nothing in respect of 
gaining territory or subduing the 
enemy. 

The tide of war was now turning, 
when Perry captured the British 
squadron on Lake Erie. It was a 
victory won by skill and bravery, 
and was followed by humanity and 
courtesy. The battle of the Thames 
soon followed this naval victory. 
This action was fought with great 
prowess by the troops under General 
Harrison, and no small share of the 
glory fell to Col. Richard M. John¬ 
son, who commanded a regiment of 
mounted volunteers from Kentucky. 
Generals Jackson and Coffee chas¬ 
tised the Creek Indians, and preserv¬ 
ed the frontiers from massacre and 
plunder. 

The eyes of the people were now 
turned to General Brown, for under 
his command Fort Erie was taken, 
and the battle of Chippewa fought, 
which redounded to the honour of 
the American arms. 

The capture of the city of Wash¬ 
ington happened in August, 1814. 
This was a mortifying affair on the 
part of the Americans, and reflected 
but little credit on the character of 
the enemy. The capitol was burnt, 
and all the publick buildings, except 
the patent office, were destroyed. 
This building was ‘saved from de¬ 
struction by the eloquence of Doctor 
Thornton, who made a feeling ap¬ 
peal to the commanding officer, re¬ 
presenting to him that if he burnt 
that office, he would be ranked with 


H ISTORY ._309 

the Goths and Vandals, or with 

Omar, who burnt the Alexandrian 
library. 

The attack upon Baltimore follow¬ 
ed : Major General Ross was slain in 
this enterprise, and the British re¬ 
treated. 

The battle, on the 25th of Decem¬ 
ber, at New Orleans, was of a deci¬ 
sive character, but that which fol¬ 
lowed on the 8th of January, was 
extraordinary in all its features. It 
was the glorious finale of the war of 
1812, a war, which, beyond all hu¬ 
man calculation, did immense ser¬ 
vice to our national character. Those 
who had prophesied disaster, were 
disappointed. Those who had for 
ever traduced the navy were put 
down, and all parties seemed to be 
satisfied that they had gained some¬ 
thing, and all were rejoiced at the 
return of peace. 

The war had brought the nation 
before the world; and the fact of hav¬ 
ing broken the magick of British 
supremacy on the ocean, alone ex¬ 
tended our fame far beyond what 
any land-fight could possibly have 
produced. Ages had passed since 
they had yielded to any thing like 
equal force, nor did they even think 
they ever should. It did so happen. 
If much misery was found in the 
train of war, as misery always 
walks in her train, still much was 
gained in the way of national honour. 
The President of the United States, 
although not a military chieftain, 
was a firm and decided statesman. 
His state papers were all written in 
good style, and appeared to the world 
as documents of great power. He 
always had the best of the argument, 
and the powers of Europe were ge¬ 
nerally on his side. It is not the 
first time in the history of nations, 
that accident has done more than 
calculation. 

The war was closed by a treaty 
between Great Britain and the United 
States, in December, 1814; and our 
nation immediately set about re¬ 
viving commerce, and encouraging 
the useful arts. The evils we had 
suffered from having all our work¬ 
shops in Europe, and particularly in 
England, during this short war, in¬ 
duced some of the most enterprising 
citizens to establish factories in many 
parts of our country Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, 






310 


HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 


took the lead, but other states soon 
followed; and such was their suc¬ 
cess in getting machines to answer 
all the purposes intended, that it was 
soon seen that the fears that some 
really had, and others affected to 
have, on this subject, were entirely 
groundless. It had been contended 
that it would require a century to 
manufacture machinery in the United 
States that could be depended upon. 
In less than seven years after the 
war, some of the best machinery that 
ever was put in motion, was to be 
found in many parts of our country. 
The enterprising promoters of do¬ 
mes tick manufactures had to struggle 
with many discouragements at first; 
but perseverance will ensure them 
success, and they will have the satis¬ 
faction of knowing that the coun¬ 
try can at all times be independent 
of other nations from her own re¬ 
sources. 

While the United States was at 
war with Great Britain, the dey of 
Algiers committed many acts of in¬ 
solence and violence on the persons 
and property of American citizens. 
At the termination of the war, the 
government had leisure to chastise 
him, and lost no time in sending a 
squadron to the Mediterranean. Ste¬ 
phen Decatur, with a part of the 
squadron intended for this station, 
reached it first, and captured two of 
the enemy’s ships in the most gallant 
style, which struck terrour into the 
heart of the dey. When Bainbridge 
arrived with his large force, the bar¬ 
barians were disposed to make peace 
on fair terms. This arrangement he 
afterwards attempted to get rid of, 
but was obliged to keep it. 

In 1S17, Mr. Madison had retired 
from office, and Mr. Monroe was 
elected president of the U nited S tates. 
Mr. Madison was an able statesman, 
and managed the affairs of the na¬ 
tion with great ability, considering 
all the difficulties he had to contend 
with. We had to fight the most 
powerful nation on earth, without 
any preparation for war. We had to 
turn our ploughshares into swords, 
and our pruning-hooks into spears. 

The administration of Mr. Monroe 
was one of peace and prosperity. 
The Floridas were ceded to the U. 
States by treaty, in his administra¬ 
tion ; perhaps the most important 
negotiation since the purchase of 


Louisiana, in which transaction he 

had no small share. Mr. Monroe 
had been a publick man from earliest 
manhood, and had filled more im¬ 
portant offices than any other person 
in the United States. In his admi¬ 
nistration the whole machinery of 
overnment moved on harmoniously, 
n every part of the country the 
marks and* the proofs of prosperity 
were visible. Not only did the arts 
and sciences flourish, but institutions 
of charity and piety were established 
throughout the land. During his ad¬ 
ministration, La Fayette was invited 
to this country, and went through 
it, receiving all the honours that a 
grateful people could bestow. This 
was not all—to show that repuldicks 
are not always ungrateful, congress 
gave him 200,000 dollars, and a grant 
of land in the Floridas worth much 
more. 

In 1825, John Q. Adams was made 
president of the United States. He 
had been secretary of state under 
Mr. Monroe, and at all times pos¬ 
sessed his confidence, consequently 
there was no change of measures. 
His inaugural address was filled with 
respect for his predecessor, and he 
declared he should tread in his path. 
He did so. His talents were consi¬ 
dered of the highest order, and his 
education supenour to that of any 
other statesman in the country. He 
held his office only one presidential 
term, when he was succeeded by 
General Jackson, who had acquired 
unbounded popularity by his asto¬ 
nishing defence of New Orleans. The 
General is now serving a second 
term, and has lately acquired great 
popularity among those who nave 
heretofore opposed him and his poli¬ 
ticks, as well as among his old friends, 
by his able exposition of the consti¬ 
tution of the United States, in his 
proclamation issued in consequence 
of the proceedings of the legislature 
of South Carolina. 


A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY 
OF THE ARTS. 

The arts and sciences are in some 
way connected with all the powers 
and. faculties of the human mind; 
and it is impossible to improve in a 
knowledge of the former, without en- 
! larging and strengthening the latter. 







HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 311 


Popular and useful science now 
includes what was once recondite 
and mysterious. What philosophers 
once looked grave upon, is now 
familiar to children as household 
words. It requires constant labour 
to keep pace with the knowledge of 
the times. No hours should be lost 
—time is short and science long —the 
day has arrived when no narrow 
view of things will answer. 

To show how necessary the arts 
and sciences are, in bettering the 
condition and elevating the mind of 
man, we need only to glance at the 
origin of the arts. They had their 
birth in the early ages of time. The 
first exertions of man must have been 
directed to sustain his life, to make 
instruments to kill game, to snare 
the bird, and hook the fish ; and then 
to form those weapons of self-defence, 
which have been common to all na¬ 
tions that have been found in savage 
life. The next art they learned, was 
one of necessity in a second degree— 
to dress and prepare the skins of the 
animals they slew, for clothing and 
ornament. The next was of a higher 
order, and required more patience 
and ingenuity to perform—the bark 
of trees was pulled apart and put to¬ 
gether in new forms, without much- 
machinery but the human hand, 
which transcends all other machines 
that ever were created. Spinning 
and weaving followed. These arose 
from a love of dress, planted, no 
doubt, in the human mind for the 
best of purposes. The dames of the 
east saw the pods of the cotton plant 
bursting out with a flower of snowy 
whiteness, and on taking it into their 
hands, they found it delicate to the 
touch, and susceptible of the most 
wonderful attenuation. Long reflec¬ 
tion, and repeated attempts, at length 
brought it to a thread, and from that to 
a cloth. So it was with the flax, which 
grew spontaneously on the banks of 
the Euphrates and the Nile; they 
found the fine hearl remaining when 
the other part had decayed, and, 
twisting it in their fingers, made from 
it an excellent thread for various pur¬ 
poses in household affairs. One ge¬ 
neration improved upon another, as 
the mother instructed the daughter 
in successive ages, until all were asto¬ 
nished at the degree of perfection to 
which the art of making cloth -was 
brought; and they then ascribed the 


origin of it to some female divinity. 

The Egyptians gave the credit of the 
invention to Isis, the Grecians to Mi¬ 
nerva, and the Peruvians to the wife 
of one of the Incas. 

The progress of the art of building 
must at first have been slow, for in 
the region which was first inhabited, 
very substantial houses were not re¬ 
quired to shelter their inmates. The 
probable advancement was owing to 
human pride or religious feeling. 
The hither and farthest east are 
marked with pyramids, built before 
the records which are in existence 
had commenced. The traveller, 
George Bethune English, counted in 
Eastern Abyssinia more than two 
hundred pyramids, from eighty to 
one hundred and fifty and two hun¬ 
dred feet in height, which had pro¬ 
bably not been seen by any Eu¬ 
ropean since the days of Thales. 
These he considered only as tomb¬ 
stones to the mighty dead of past 
ages. Some tender-hearted histo¬ 
rians have mourned over these vast 
piles, and imagined the tears and 
groans of the countless millions who 
were tasked in their erection. I do 
not join their lamentations, for it ap¬ 
pears to me that these masses were 
erected not only to gratify pride, but 
to promote peace. These nations 
were inclined to cruel wars ; and a 
wise prince often engaged the minds 
of his people in some national affair, 
as erecting a temple, building a city, 
or cutting a canal, to quiet the rest¬ 
less minds of his subjects. David 
could not build a temple, for he was 
always at war; but Solomon had 
peace and leisure, and engaged his 
people in an undertaking which gra¬ 
tified their national pride. 

In this early period, every one who 
did anything to advance the arts was 
paid by extensive renown, and not 
unfrequently by divine honours. The 
beautiful fable of the ancients,of Vul¬ 
can and his wife, of his forging thun¬ 
der bolts for his father Jove, was 
probably nothing more than this :— 
Some ingenious smith, having made 
better tempered swords, ana more 
curious shields, than had been in use 
before, received for his reward from 
his liege lord, every honour, and 
with them the hand of his most 
lovely daughter in marriage ; and 
this Vulcan gave her as a brrdal pre¬ 
sent that wonderful girdle, so exqui- 






312 HISTORY OF THE ARTS, 


sitely wrought, by this worker in all 

metals, since known in every poetick 
legend as the Cestus of Venus. The 
ingenuity of the poet was equal at 
least to that of the artist, and he has 
described it in transcendent verse. 

“ In it livescvi'ry art awl every charm 
To win the wisest, anil the coldest warm— 

Foml love, the gentle vow, the gay desire, 

The kind deceit, the still reviving fire, 

Persuasive speech, and more peisuasive sighs, 
Silence that speak, and eloquence of eyes. 

The story of the forge of Vulcan 
being under Mount Etna is clearly 
accounted for, by the fact that every 
artist at that time worked secretly, so 
that no one should steal his inform- 
i ation. The great smith no doubt 
1 had his shop in some retired spot, 
near th'• mine he was drawing from ; 
and his athletick journeymen and 
apprentices, with their sinewy arms 
and ponderous blows, seen and heard 
by wood cutters and shepherds 
through masses of smoke, were mag* 
nified to Cyclops in their imagination. 

In the ages before letters were in¬ 
vented, the arts unquestionably had 
made some considerable progress; 
but they could not have reached a 
very high state of perfection, until 
one generation were possessed of the 
signs by which they could commu¬ 
nicate their thoughts to another. 
The hieroglyphicks on Babylonish 
bricks, are now found to have sounds 
attached to them, and are, therefore, 
as much letters as our own alphabet, 
so that in the days when the Pyra¬ 
mids were erected, letters were 
known. If written language w r as 
not so copious then as at the present 
day, still it was surely a medium of 
communication. 

Passing from Egypt to Greece, the 
use of letters was improved, and the 
arts were refined, and several of 
them reached perhaps their highest 
point of perfection. The architecture 
and sculpture of that day have never 
been surpassed, if equalled—it was 
the reign of taste and genius. The 
talents of the Greeks were not con¬ 
fined to the fine arts alone;—their 
weapons of war were much better 
than those of their neighbours. If 
they did not know how to make 
steel, they mixed copper and other 
metallick substances with their iron, 
to render it tougher than iron could 
be made alone, and the superiority 
of their weapons was found in every 
war they had with the Persians 


Their architecture has never been 

surpassed. No man could speak 
coarsely who had taste sufficient to 
admire the Parthenon; and the mind 
of Greece had stamped itself on every 
particle of manufactured matter in 
Attica. In the bosom of the arts 
man could not be a savage. In all 
the progress of their arts, the pro¬ 
fessors of them did homage to the 
poet, for they not only made the 
semblance of men after the concep¬ 
tion of Homer, but modelled the 
images of the gods after his descrip¬ 
tion of them in the Iliad. 

At the same time that the arts 
and letters were flourishing in 
Greece, perhaps previously, com¬ 
merce had scattered them over 
many parts of the world. They had 
made great progress at Jerusalem, 
and among the Phoenicians and Ty¬ 
rians. Solomon sent to King Hi¬ 
ram for an accomplished artist, and 
one was sent of a high order. 

“ Now I have sent a cunfling man, 
endowed with understanding, of Hi¬ 
ram my father's, the son of a woman 
of the daughter of Dan , and his fa¬ 
ther was a man of 'Pyre, skilful to 
work in gold, and in silver, and in 
brass, in iron and in stone, and in 
timber, in purple, in blue, and in 
fine linen, and in crimson ; also to 
grave any manner of graving, and 
to find out every device which shall 
be put to him , ivith thy cunning men, 
and with the cunning men of my 
lord David thy father)’ 

This is not only a proof of the ad¬ 
vancement of the arts, but of the 
high estimation in which mecha- 
nicks were held by the princes of 
those days. Here was an ingenious 
son of a widow, extolled by one 
monarch, and received by another 
as a friend and brother. The arts, 
in this instance, were made sub¬ 
servient to piety, as well as to taste 
and to peace. 

The work of Solomon and his art¬ 
ist, the widow’s son, is a proof that 
the arts were in a high state of per¬ 
fection. If the temple was equal in 
wonderful workmanship tn the Par¬ 
thenon, it wanted something of the 
classical taste of the latter. The 
gorgeous style of Oriental affluence 
was more regarded by the wise man 
of Judah than by the architects of 
Athens. 

The Romans borrowed their arts 





313 


_ HISTORY O F 

from Greece ; they invented but few 
things themselves, but were content 
with what their masters in the arts 
had produced for them.' If they im¬ 
proved in any thing, it was in the 
use of the mechanical powers, as ap¬ 
plied to the battering-ram, and in the 
art of tempering swords. Their 
swords were better than those of the 
nations they contended with. When 
they fought with the Gauls, they 
found men as brave as themselves ; 
but the swords of the Gauls were 
untempered, with a bad cutting edge, 
and were easily bent in fighting, 
which rendered them useless until 
they were straightened, and for this 
they had no other method than press¬ 
ing them under their feet. 

When Greece was no longer free, 
and the power of Rome had declined 
and was tottering towards a fall, then 
letters were neglected, and the arts 
ceased to flourish;—then the stern 
conquerors regarded no arts but 
those of furious warfare ;—food, 
power, and conquest, were all their 
wants, and all they sought;—in the 
halls of the conscript fathers they 
hunted wild beasts for amusement. 
With the arts sunk the dignity of 
man and the courtesies of life. The 
pride of refinement and of science 
was no more; but brute force took 
the reins of government and direct¬ 
ed the course of nations. 

The arts and sciences were crushed 
—not destroyed. A chosen few pre¬ 
served them most sacredly, but they 
were mixed up with superstitions and 
mysteries;—then, art and mystery 
were synonymous ; and numerous 
oaths were necessary to get initiated 
into any art or science. The build¬ 
ing of castles and churches was con¬ 
fined to a few only—that is, a few 
who knew the plan or intention of 
the master-builder. That these were 
faithful workmen, is in evidence 
when we examine Westminster Ab¬ 
bey, or any of the old churches, from 
St. Sophia downward. They were 
made upon the most desirable prin¬ 
ciples. In the dark ages, the mind 
had an influence upon the arts, and 
the arts upon the mind and taste. It 
would have been quite impossible for 
the monks to have performed all their 
rites and ceremonies of flagellation 
or starving in a fine Grecian temple. 
They must have had deep solitudes 
and awful cells to have brought the 


THE ARTS. 

mind to such a gloomy discipline;— 
Gothick gloom and grandeur were 
necessary to bring the spirit to such 
cloistered feelings. The learned 
men of that day were sagacious; they 
knew that the mind of man, in some 
degree, resembled the skin of the 
chameleon—it takes a hue from ex¬ 
ternal matter, from light or shade. 

There were some bright spots on 
the globe in the ages of general dark¬ 
ness—some sweet moments in the 
passage of time. Arabick literature 
and science flourished in the ninth 
century. The house of wisdom was 
illumined with ten thousand lamps 
of science, that were suspended to 
imitate the clear skies and splendid 
climate of Greece, in the days of her 
orators and poets. The Arabians 
had more enthusiasm, if less taste, 
than the teachers of the world ; and 
in some arts and sciences they sur¬ 
passed their masters. The first 
clock that ever measured time was 
made for the caliph of Bagdad. This 
art, it has been said, was lost for 
several centuries. But the successors 
of that race of men did not forget the 
discovery of an art of a pernicious 
nature. The Arabs found out the 
art of distillation, and exhibited alco¬ 
hol as a triumph of art, in making 
nature give up her secrets to those 
who severally interrogated her; and 
every rude nation since has kept pos¬ 
session of that secret, until it is no 
longer one. They have steeped their 
senses in the alcohol, but found in 
it none of that inspiration which 
breathed in the learning of the age 
and nation whose glories we are 
glancing at. 

Events that seem to astound and 
afflict mankind at the time they oc¬ 
cur, are often made causes of the 
happiest results. When the Turk 
came dowrn upon Constantinople, in 
1453, all Christendom trembled for 
tfiTe fate of the cross. The political 
seer beheld in his affrighted visions 
another Omar demolishing thou¬ 
sands of Christian temples, and erect¬ 
ing mosques in their stead, through¬ 
out the world. But these fears were 
not well grounded. By this event 
the knowledge which the Greeks still 
possessed was scattered throughout 
all Europe. The learned men, who 
had been dozing at the feet of imbe¬ 
cile tyrants, and wasting the glim¬ 
mering light of their minds upon de- 





314 


HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 


cayed institutions, were now driven 
abroad by the wreck of the eastern 
empire, and acquired new life by 
breathing freely the open air of Eu¬ 
rope. Letters, it is true, took the 
first place, but attention to the arts 
and sciences soon followed. 

At this crisis was discovered the 
most important art that the world 
has ever known, the invention of 
printing. Now commenced a union 
between letters and the arts,that time 
can never dissolve. It was the bow 
set in the moral world, by which 
the Creator declared that the floods 
of ignorance shall never again 
deluge mankind. This was indeed 
the art that harmonized the world, 
and placed within the grasp of each 
person, the knowledge of all, for 
their contemplation and advantage. 
In a few years after this wonderful 
invention, the whole of Europe was 
well supplied with books of value in 
the different languages, and in the 
arts and sciences. 

Now the enterprising portion of 
Europe seemed alive with their am¬ 
bitious pursuits of knowledge:— 
Florence, Venice, Portugal and 
Spain, with France and England, 
turned their attention to cultivating 
science as well as letters ; and soon 
after this period, Rome, which for 
so long a time had believed and 
slept , now became alive to painting, 
architecture, and all the fine arts. 
In less than half a century after the 
fall of Constantinople, Columbus 
had discovered a new world, and 
Vasco de Gama had found a passage 
to India by .doubling the Cape of 
Good Hope. Not far from the close 
of the fifteenth century, the Floren¬ 
tine muses had gained an enviable 
renown ; and Michael Angelo, in the 
pride of art and science, had de¬ 
clared that he would place the Pan¬ 
theon in the heavens ; and the size 
of the dome of St. Peter is precisely 
that of the temple of the gods. 

All this would not have given to 
Europe this Continent, if another 
art had not been discovered—that of 
making gunpowder. If the abori¬ 
gines had been put upon equal 
grounds with the assailants in re- 
ard to weapons, we should not have 
een here at this day, for sufficient 
corporeal strength could not have 
been brought to subdue the na¬ 
tives. 


The invention of gunpowder 

seemed at first to threaten the exter¬ 
mination of the human race ; but in 
process of time, it has been found to 
have diminished the effusion of hu¬ 
man blood. Well mmht affrighted 
nations have believed, when they 
saw the fire flash, the burst of in¬ 
fernal smoke, heard the thunder 
roll, and witnessed the havock 
made by the iron messengers of 
death, that men were soon to be 
driven from the face of the earth; 
but it did not so turn out; for the 
carnage of the battles of Salarms 
and Lepanto, were thrice as bloody 
as those of Camperdown, the Nile, 
Trafalgar and Navarino. The forms 
of fighting have changed since the 
introduction of cannon ; and the use 
of the musket has taken off that 
fury which seizes men who are 
struggling hand to hand in mortal 
combat. The fight is now decided 
by warlike ardour, without individual 
vengeance. The time is probably 
near at hand, when art is to proceed 
much farther in the science of de¬ 
struction :—The discovery of firing 
bombs horizontally will unques¬ 
tionably make a most wonderful 
change in sea-fight; and this with 
torpedoes and Greek fire, may soon 
be in use. Invention is at work, and 
genius is revolving upon mighty 
matters in the way of warfare, a« 
well as upon those necessary in the 
common business of life. 

The settlement of this Continent, 
to use the language of a great states¬ 
man, “ offered a world of matter for 
a world of mind.” It gave a new 
spring to industry and to the arts. 
The art of ship building made more 
rapid progress, from the voyages of 
Columbus to the fitting out of the in¬ 
vincible Armada, (from 1492 to 1533, 
ninety-six years), than it had from 
the siege of Troy up to the days of 
Columbus. Cicero speaks of a ship 
of fifty tuns burden as a splendid 
affair. 

The science of mathematicks was 
now rapidly gaining ground; and 
men of science, who formerly only 
made use of their knowledge to 
astonish the ignorant, now began 
to bring it to practical uses, in the 
arts of life. In 1610, decimal arith- 
metick was discovered, and in four 
years afterwards logarithms were in¬ 
vented; of course navigation had 





HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 


acquired an accuracy that it had not 
previously possessed. 

At the period of settling North 
America, navigators were not at a 
loss to find their course to any point 
on this continent. The errour made 
by the Dutch navigator, who brought 
out the pilgrims, was no doubt a 
wilful one. He knew better. 

I will now attempt to trace the 
progress of the arts in this country. 
The guides I have to assist me to do 
this are indeed scanty, and are scat¬ 
tered through many volumes, where 
such matters are only incidentally 
mentioned. There is but one statis¬ 
tical work extant that was publish¬ 
ed in this country previous to the 
revolution, and this cannot be fully 
relied upon. I mean Douglass’s 
History of New England. 

The settlers of Virginia brought 
mechanicks capable only of erecting 
a house or small fort, or construct¬ 
ing a boat. The first object of the 
settlers was quite indefinite; and 
trading with the Indians, raising 
tobacco and corn, constituted their 
principal pursuits. The ruins of 
Jamestown discovered no marks of 
advancement in architecture. They 
have trusted more, in every stage of 
their growth, to agriculture than to 
the arts. 

The emigrants which came to 
other parts of this country, soon af¬ 
ter the settlement of Virginia, were, 
to all intents, at first, a mere trading 
community, and thought but little 
of the arts. The mother country 
furnished all articles they wanted 
at a much cheaper rate than they 
could manufacture them here. 

The settlement of the pilgrims in 
1620, afforded no more mechanicks 
than were absolutely necessary for 
the emergencies of the hour:—they 
came with no other settled purpose 
than to worship God in their own 
way. The first buildings they erect¬ 
ed at Plymouth, exhibited no marks 
of taste in the arts. It was reserved 
for those intelligent colonists who 
settled the Province of Massachu¬ 
setts Bay, and who first came to 
Boston, to be the founders of the 
mechanick arts in this country. 
They early began ship-building, and 
of course encouraged all the mecha¬ 
nicks connected with this business, 
such as carpenters, anchor-makers, 
smiths of almost every description 


_ 315 

sail-makers, riggers, calkers and 
gravers, block-makers, &c. Such 
was their enterprise in this art, that, 
in 1665, there were one hundred and 
twenty vessels, from twenty to one 
hundred tuns, in Massachusetts, 
and twelve ships of a much larger 
size. From this time, up to the pe¬ 
riod of the revolution, many vessels 
were built for English agents, in 
New England. On every well situ¬ 
ated stream, the business of building 
vessels was going on, as the lumber 
and labour was reasonable, and a 
vessel was soon ready to launch af¬ 
ter her keel was laid. These ves¬ 
sels were fastened with trunnels of 
wood, and much iron was not want¬ 
ed ; whatever was required was 
brought from England. The men 
engaged in ship-building had always 
a powerful influence in the sea-port 
towns of this country, and they 
were particularly forward in those 
stormy times preceding the revolu¬ 
tion. Caucuses were first held by 
them in Boston, and they were the 
pioneers in every act of opposition. 

The art of printing was almost 
coeval with that of ship-building in 
this country. A press was esta¬ 
blished in 1639, at Cambridge, near 
Boston, and the art has never flag¬ 
ged since. Works of utility, such as 
the Freeman’s Oath, and those open¬ 
ing or explaining the duties of men 
who loved liberty, were first issued 
from this press, and then works of 
piety and sentiment. The history 
of the press in this country, would 
of itself make a volume. 

The next branch of industry and 
the arts, was that of making iron; 
the want of which was greatly felt. 
In 1645, only fifteen years after the 
settlement of Boston, the legisla¬ 
ture granted leave to certain petition¬ 
ers to build a forge at Lynn, within 
ten miles of Boston. The forge was 
erected, and did well; but some mis¬ 
understanding taking place, it was 
abandoned. The first iron ever 
made in the colonies was at this 
forge. The same year, the general 
Court offered a bounty, and were 
willing to grant a monopoly for mak¬ 
ing iron, and did actually appropri¬ 
ate 3,000 acres of land, as an induce¬ 
ment to establish a forge. They 
indeed went farther, and offered the 
extraordinary grant of exclusive pos¬ 
session of the territory for three 







316 


HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 


miles square near the forge, as the 
domains of the establishment, and 
that the number of these exclusive 

f rants might be extended to six. 
n 1652, seven years after this 
offer, a forge was set up at Rayn- 
ham, about twenty miles south of 
Boston, which flourished for some 
time. More than sixty years after 
this period, (1715,) pig iron was made 
in Virginia. 

As early as 1659, an attempt was 
made in Virginia to manufacture 
silk. An act passed the legislature 
of that commonwealth for encou¬ 
raging the manufacture of this ar¬ 
ticle, with an intent for making it a 
staple fot export; but tobacco and 
wheat were found more productive, 
and took the place of all other com¬ 
modities. 

In 1703, the business of making 
silk was introduced into South Ca¬ 
rolina, probably by the Huguenots, | 
who fled to this country at the re¬ 
vocation of the edict of Nantz, and 
it flourished for a while; but it hap¬ 
pened, that eight years before this 
eriod, (1695) rice was brought there 
y a vessel from Madagascar, the 
master of which distributed a bag 
of rice, and instructed the people in 
what sorts of soil to sow it. The 
crop was satisfactory, and this and 
indigo were the staple articles of ex¬ 
port from that state, till in a later 
age, they were superseded by cotton. 

In 1759, Georgia made consider¬ 
able progress in manufacturing silk; 
10,000 pounds were brought that 
year to Savannah for market. Other 
crops, however, soon took the place 
of silk. 

After the revolutionary war, there 
was a successful attempt to manu¬ 
facture silk in Connecticut; and in 
1792, a clergyman’s gown, and some 
silk stockings, were manufactured 
in that state. In many places this 
article of late has been attended to; 
and the yeomen of the country are 
planting mulberry trees, in order to 
commence the cultivation of silk on 
a large scale. 

Cotton, now the great staple of 
the south, was introduced into South 
Carolina about the middle of the 
last century. In 1788 it was first 
planted in Georgia. In 1791, it was 
first exported from this country.— 
The same year, a cotton factory was 
established at Rhode Island, the 


first, I believe, in the United States. 

In 1830, 613,185 bales were sent from 
the United States, and the amount 
is increasing every year. 

Flax was not cultivated for domes- 
tick manufacture until 1719, when 
the Irish settled Londonderry, in 
New Hampshire. They brought 
with them the foot-wheel, and be¬ 
gan the liberal culture of the flax;— 
they also brought with them the 
Irish potato, which, until then, 
had not been cultivated in New 
England. The Spanish potato was 
not introduced until 1764. Soon af¬ 
ter this, no inconsiderable quantity 
of flax was raised; for it was a long 
time before cotton was brought from 
the south to New England. The 
shirts of our fathers were for many 
years made of woollen : one reason, 
perhaps, why they had fewer cramps 
than we are subject to. 

Among our early manufactures, 
were hats of an excellent quality, 
which were made for exportation. 
We had plenty of beaver and otter, 
and made them in a most durable 
manner. This article was particu¬ 
larly searched for by the custom¬ 
house officers, after the navigation 
act went into effect; but the act 
was avoided by sending the hat- 
bodies to the West India Islands, 
and with them mechanicks as finish¬ 
ers, by which means no inconsider¬ 
able trade was carried on. Other 
articles were managed in the like 
manner. 

It is a fact worth recording, that 
every attempt of the mother coun¬ 
try to retard the growth of manu¬ 
factures in this country, has event¬ 
uated in their advancement. The 
first attack upon the arts, manufac¬ 
tures, and commerce of this coun¬ 
try, was the famous navigation act, 
passed by the parliament in 1651; 
in less than two years after the be¬ 
heading of Charles I., and confirmed 
and enlarged by Charles II., in 1660. 
If this act had been rigidly carried 
into effect, nearly the whole com¬ 
merce and manufacturing interests 
of the colonies would have been de¬ 
stroyed. But its enactments were 
avoided, even by the most consci¬ 
entious. The custom-houses were 
not strict, for fear of consequences; 
for every wise minister of England 
knew how much the colonies were 
taxed for carrying on the war with 





HISTORY OF THE ARTS. 317 


the French, through the medium of 
this country. A century passed 
from the time of Charles II., before 
England was so unwise as to look 
more strictly after the customs in 
this country. 

In 1761, the first of the troubles 
commenced, by drawing too close the 
cords of the revenue system. The or¬ 
dinary methods werefound not suf¬ 
ficient to prevent smuggling; and 
the revenue officers in Massachusetts 
petitioned the Supreme Court of that 
State for writs of assistance, a pro¬ 
cess which had been known only to 
the star-chamber, empowering the 
officers to break into and enter any 
dwelling house, as well as store, in 
search of goods that had not paid 
duties. This was boldly resisted, 
and never was granted by the Court. 

In 1765, the sugar act was passed. 
In the same year, came the stamp 
act. The effect of this was terrible. 
The colonies denounced it as a death 
blow to their liberties; and it was re¬ 
sisted in almost every city and town 
in America. The people entered in¬ 
to agreements not to import the ne¬ 
cessary articles of common use from 
England, and did every thing they 
could to encourage domestickmanu- 
factures. The highest classes came 
into these agreements most readily, 
and much was done. The class of 
students that graduated at Harvard 
in 1770, appeared in black cloth of 
domestick manufacture. 

An impulse was thus given to do¬ 
mestick industry, and for a while they 
got on by the warmth of their patri¬ 
otism, yet the trial was severe. The 
colonies suffered less for leather than 
for any other article ; for, having 
sufficient bark at hand, and not 
much skill being required in the man¬ 
ufacture of the article, they had tan¬ 
ned all the hides produced since the 
first settlement of the country. 

The state of some of the arts, at 
the breaking out of the war, was, in 
many respects, at a very low ebb— 
particularly in those necessary to pre¬ 
pare us for the contest. In ship-build¬ 
ing we astonished our enemies, by 
the size and number of our privateers; 
but in many instances they went to 
sea not half furnished with munitions 
of war, trusting to get their supplies 
from the enemy; and this they 
often effected. In June, 1775, there 
was not a powder-mill in the coun- 
2 A 2 


try. This circumstance put in requi¬ 

sition the whole of the science we 
had in chymistry, in order to get at a 
knowledge of making gunpowder. 
This it took some time to effect. 

The first two months that Wash¬ 
ington commanded the army at 
Cambridge, there was not sufficient 
owder in camp to last for half an 
our, should he nave engaged the en¬ 
emy. His camp was frequently sup¬ 
plied with this article from our pri¬ 
vateers, which, being commanded 
by brave men, generally were suc¬ 
cessful. At that period we had not 
a sufficient number of gunsmiths to 
repair the old small arms, which 
had been used against Indians, deer, 
and wild-fowl, and now wanted a 
little tinkering to meet the v/ell arm¬ 
ed foe ; but mechanical ingenuity, 
among those who were obliged to 
turn their hands to almost every 
thing, soon remedied the most alarm¬ 
ing evils, and at the battle of Trenton, 
clothes and provisions were more 
wanted than arms. Among those 
captured, there were many mechan- 
icks, and most of them deserted, find¬ 
ing good encouragement among the 
captors. After the capture of Bur- 
goyne, artisans had become more 
plentiful; yet to the close of the war 
there was hardly a regiment that had 
muskets of an equal calibre. 

The country, at the peace of 1783, 
would have rubbed along with their 
manufactures, if a flood of necessa¬ 
ry articles had not been poured in up¬ 
on us, at much lower rates than we 
could afford to make them for, and 
of a much finer fabrick than we had 
learned to manufacture. The little 
factories, of course, all fell to the 
ground ; and nothing, but here and 
there a blacksmith’s sriop, with a few 
fulling-mills and dressing shops, was 
found. The saw, and the corn mills, 
stood as before; these had been ne¬ 
cessary for the very existence of the 
people, and they could not be dispen¬ 
sed with on any change of times.— 
The agriculturist and the merchant 
now had the whole field, and grew 
rich very rapidly, particularly from 
1793 to 1806, when we had much of 
the carrying trade of Europe, then 
involved in war. After 1806, com¬ 
merce began to find numerous em¬ 
barrassments from the Berlin and 
Milan decrees, and the orders in 
council ; and their embargoes and 





318 HISTORY OP THE ARTS. 


nonimportation laws followed.— 
Some capitalists began now to think 
of investing their funds in manufac¬ 
turing establishments; but this was 
hazardous, for a change of times 
might destroy their prospects at once. 
England did not believe that -any 
state of things could transfer her 
work-shops to *4.merica; and so firm 
was she in the opinion, that she 
laughed at the suggestion. The war 
of 1812, unfortunate as it might have 
been deemed by those who opposed 
it, was necessary to an independence 
in arts, as well as politicks. This 
war led some of our most sagacious 
men to deep reflection on the sub¬ 
ject ; and the result was to raise a 
manufacturing interest in our coun¬ 
try. It was no hasty business.— 
They counted our wants, and calcu¬ 
lated how they might be supplied at 
home. They began at the founda¬ 
tion, by making machinery, not 
thinking it would do even to import 
that: when the machinery was rea¬ 
dy, it was set in motion, and was 
found to answer every purpose. The 
people took hold in earnest; and if 
these establishments have had their 
dark hours, they have generally sur¬ 
vived every difficulty, and are now 
prosperous. Some have complain¬ 
ed of the protection that has been 

g iven to manufacturing interests ; 

ut the merchant who now com¬ 
plains, will probably in the end be 
satisfied that it was a judicious poli¬ 
cy : and the farmer is already satis¬ 
fied that a home market is more cer¬ 
tain than a foreign one. 

There should be no fears entertain¬ 
ed that mechanicks will increase too 
rapidly in this country. As yet we 
have not reached the point of a 
wholesome proportion to the agri¬ 
cultural interest. The best political 
economists agree in this, that one 
hundred agricultural families ought 
to support with food sixty-six fami¬ 
lies, viz.: 1 priest, 2 lawyers, 4 
medical men, 4 schoolmasters, 6 
tailors, 8 carpenters, 5 smiths, 3 
braziers, 2 cabinet-makers, 14 manu¬ 
facturers, and 12 traders, including 
clerks. In England, there are dou¬ 
ble that proportion, which is un¬ 
doubtedly the cause of the frequent 
difficulties in the manufacturing ci¬ 
ties, because there is not food enough 
in the country for the support of the 
whole* and when the mechanick is 


out of employment, he has no pro¬ 
ductive resources left. 

Other nations of Europe are en¬ 
couraging the arts and sciences, 
and lending all their strength, in 
these times of peace, to build up 
their manufacturing establishments. 
Italy now has 100 agricultural fami¬ 
lies to 31 non-agricultural ; France, 
to 100 agricultural families has 50 
non-agriculturalGermany is en¬ 
larging her factories; and every na¬ 
tion that pursues such a course of 
policy, is securing her independence. 

In former times, the prosperity of 
nations was estimated by the quan¬ 
tity of the precious metals they could 
command, or the flocks and herds 
they possessed; but at the present 
day, the prosperity and wealth of a 
nation is estimated by the quantity 
of iron they use;—it is a representa¬ 
tive of their enterprise, and of the ex¬ 
tent of their industry. 

In England there are 278 furnaces 
in blast, which make 700,000 tuns of 
pig iron; which produces 545,000 
tuns of bar iron : about 150,000 tuns 
of this is exported, and the balance, 
395,000 tuns, is wrought in the coun¬ 
try. This is indeed a prodigious 
quantity. In the United States, 
there is used over 200,000 tuns of 
different kinds of iron ; about one 
half of this is imported, and the 
other half made in this country. Of 
course there is a fair opportunity for 
additional furnaces, without being 
able to supply the market. The use of 
iron for cables, rail-roads, fences, 
&c., will continue the increase of 
the demand, as the population in¬ 
creases. A few years ago, we were 
not apprised of the extent of our 
own mines, in the numerous classes 
of minerals. The enterprise and sci¬ 
ence of the age has made Plutus 
give up his buried treasure. Of the 
forty-three metals known now to 
the artist and the chymist, our coun¬ 
try furnishes more than one half of 
the number, and the most valuable 
of them—iron, lead, copper, &c., in 
the greatest abundance. Every day 
is producing something to add to 
the comforts of man, and of course 
to the value of human life. Steam¬ 
boats and rail-roads have diminish¬ 
ed space and shortened time, and 
allowed us to crowd the labours of 
a week into the compass of a day. 
We have now just begun the march 






HISTORY OF,AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


of improvement in the arts, and are 
becoming acquainted with the laws 
of nature, and the riches of the earth. 
It is not more than eighty years ago, 
our statesmen and political econo¬ 
mists saw, or thought they saw, an 
impediment to the growth of the 
country, particularly the northern 
parts of it, in the scarcity of fuel, 
and legislative aid was invoked to 
make the yeomen plant trees, to 
ward off the evil. Others, less timid, 
anticipated the discovery of coal; 
but they were thought too credulous. 

We live in a world of mutations, 
and ever changing opinions. It 
is now short of six hundred years 
since coal was first introduced as 
fuel, and Edward the First, prohibited 
the use of it in London, from the be¬ 
lief that the smoke filled the air with 
pestilential vapours; when at the pre¬ 
sent day the same smoke is consider¬ 
ed as destroying the pestilence.— 
Some mechanicks are apprehensive 
that labour saving machines are to be 
of great injury to the mass of labour¬ 
ers ; but I think that we have noth¬ 
ing to fear from this quarter. In the 
year 1776, Mr. Hargrave, in England, 
invented the first spinning-jenny, 
which has saved countless millions 
to the nation ; and, as far as I am 
able to learn, has not diminished 
the price of labour, the only change 
being in the duties of the workmen. 
Whatever the operatives may have 
to fear in England, cannot affect 
them in this country, while there is 
such a supply of land for the agri¬ 
culturist ; nor can we tremble at 
the number of steam engines, con¬ 
sidered as consumers of fuel, as the 
poor do in England, seeing there are 
15,000 of them at work in the Uni¬ 
ted Kingdom. Our water power, 
scattered over the land at conveni¬ 
ent distances, precludes the necessity 
of multiplying these engines in this 
country to any great extent. 

It requires a long time to bring 
any art or science to a degree of 
perfection ; and although we began 
with a greater share of intelligence, 
and more liberal means, than other 
nations have done, still we have not 
dedicated to the arts a sufficient 
number of years, to do ourselves 
justice as citizens; but every annual 
exhibition of manufactures shows 
that mind is increasing its power 
over matter, and that science is suo- 


__319 

plying for us what long experience 

had taught others. No people on 
earth have so much inventive genius 
at work, as we have, considering the 
number of those engaged in the arts. 
Mind is brought in collision with 
mind, and sparks of celestial fire are 
constantly flying abroad. The pa¬ 
tent office, although containing some 
rubbish, as might be expected, is an 
unquestionable proof, to use the lan¬ 
guage of a distinguished foreigner, 
of “a deep thinking people.” 


A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERI¬ 
CAN LITERATURE. 

American Literature seems to be 
but imperfectly understood abroad— 
but when the subject is fully exam¬ 
ined it will be found that there have 
been many excellent writers in this 
country on many subjects of do p in¬ 
terest to the community. Litera¬ 
ture had been cherished in Eng¬ 
land for the best part of a century 
before the American colonies were 
planted, or before they arrived to 
any consideration, and the planters 
had no small share of it, especially 
that part of learning which related 
to theology and biblical criticism.— 
The puritan divines were deeply 
read in the humanities, and when the 
yoke of Rome was thrown off, they 
prepared themselves to defend their 
opinions with all the learning of the 
East. When these men, ana those 
under their clerical guidance, came 
to this country, they brought all the 
books necessary to defend them¬ 
selves, and the faith they professed, 
and instruct succeeding generations. 
Those who did come to this new world 
for conscience’s sake, w T ere among 
the most enterprising men of the mo¬ 
ther country. In 1606, the Virginia 
settlement began. The next was 
commenced by the Dutch, on Hud¬ 
son’s river. Smith, the leader of the 
Virginian colony, w as a man of high 
acquirements and accomplishments. 
He wrote a minute account of all he 
saw and examined, and of course 
must be considered as having com¬ 
menced the literature of the country. 
He published, in 1608, his sixth voy¬ 
age to Virginia; six years after¬ 
wards, his first voyage to New-Eng- 
land ; and the next year, his second 
voyage to the same place; and in 
1617, a description of the country 






320 


HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


These were in addition to works he 
had previously published of his ad¬ 
ventures in other countries. 

Among the pilgrims who came to 
Plymouth in 1620, there were many 
men of literary information. The 
venerable Brewster, and his friend 
Carver, were both well educated, and 
the political compact drawn up be¬ 
fore these pilgrims landed,is sufficient 
proof of their intelligence ; and the 
correspondence this little band had 
with the settlers of New Amsterdam, 
only seven years after they had taken 
possession of New England, is cor¬ 
roborative of the fact. The letters 
from GovernourWinslow to the goy- 
ernour of New Amsterdam are writ¬ 
ten with acuteness and elegance.— 
Several of his productions have come 
down to us and are much esteemed 
at the present time. One of his 
works is called Good News from 
Ncio England. 

The colony established by Win- 
throp, and others, in Massachusetts, 
in 1630, contained several very learn¬ 
ed men, both in law and divinity.— 
Winthrop was an intelligent lawyer. 
He kept a journal of his proceedings, 
and noted all the remarkable events 
as they happened. This work, after 
a variety of fortunes, has been given 
to the publick, nearly or quite com¬ 
plete. Parts of the manuscript had 
been lost, which a few years since 
were accidentally found. 

Harvard College was established 
in 1636, and soon afterwards a print¬ 
ing press was set up in Cambridge. 
From this press issued many valua¬ 
ble works. The first book printed 
was the Freeman’s Call; soon af¬ 
ter this, an almanack ; and the first 
political pamphlet was “ The Chris¬ 
tian Commonwealth,” written by 
Elliot, the apostle to the Indians , who 
soon afterwards learned the lan¬ 
guage of the aborigines, and trans¬ 
lated the Bible into their vernacular 
tongue, with parcels of several other 
books for religious instruction. This 
translation of the Bible must have 
been a work of prodigious labour.— 
There are a few copies of it now ex¬ 
tant, and these are indeed great cu¬ 
riosities, for the very race it was 
meant to instruct have vanished 
from the face of the earth. 

Hooker, a divine who came to 
Boston, wrote many sermons, and 
a work on church discioline; and at 


the same period, Thomas Parker, a 

learned man, was engaged in the 
cause of literature, with James 
Noyes, his friend; they were pub¬ 
lishers of several works on divinity. 
Some of Parker’s works were on 
the controversial side. 

Mr. Thomas Shephard wrote on 
metaphysical subjects; such as “ the 
morality of the Sabbath “ New 
England's lamentation for Old 
England's Err ours and likewise, 

“ An explanation of the parable of 
the ten Virgins .” This last work is 
said to abound in the philosophy of 
the heart, and has been the guide to 
many who have attempted an ana¬ 
lysis of the affections and the pas¬ 
sions. When Shephard died, Pre¬ 
sident Oakes delivered a eulogy, in 
Latin, on his character. Shephard 
had two sons, who were distinguish¬ 
ed scholars. 

One of the best writers of that 
day, was Nathaniel Ward. He vvas 
not only a man of versatile genius* 
but he had laboured in several pro¬ 
fessions, certainly in law and divin¬ 
ity. He wielded the pen of an ac¬ 
complished satirist. He wrote “ the 
simple cobbler of Agawam .” This 
was a satire upon the enemies ot 
Charles I., and was full of causticity 
and wit. He also wrote the “ Body 
of the Liberties .” This is a singular 
work, and perhaps contains more 

erms of the true and fundamental 

octrines of liberty and law, than 
any work of its size in the world. 
There is not a feature of all our 
State and of our federal constitu¬ 
tions, but may be found in the 
“ Body of the Liberties .” 

Peter Buckeley wrote Latin poet¬ 
ry ; some scraps have been pre¬ 
served. He wrote and published a 
celebrated theological work, entitled, 
“ The Covenant of Grace opened .” 

Ezekiel Rogers, a clergyman of 
Rowley, preached the election ser¬ 
mon in 1643. This production was 
a most direct promulgation of de¬ 
mocracy, as he advocated rotation in 
office, and urged the impropriety of 
choosing a governour for a second 
term. The people were then too 
wise to follow such advice; but it 
shows how much the whole mass 
were inclined to democracy, that such 
a sermon should have been tolerated. 

One of the most voluminous 
writers of that day, was John Cot- 







HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 321 


ton, mostly on subjects of divinity 
or church government. A cata¬ 
logue of his works are given, merely 
to show how indefatigable the found¬ 
ers of our Repubiick were in all their 
duties of enlightening the minds of 
the people: “God’s Promise to 
his Plantation, art election sermon, 
1634; a Letter in answer to objec¬ 
tions made against the New Eng¬ 
land Churches, with the questions 
proposed to such as are admitted to 
Church Fellowship, 1641; The Way 
of Life, 4to; God’s mercy mixed with 
his Justice; an Abstract of the Laws 
of New England, 1641, and a second 
edition 1655;” this abstract of such 
laws of the Jews, as were supposed 
to be of perpetual obligation, was 
drawn up in 1636, when Vane was 
governour, though it was never ac¬ 
cepted ; it is preserved in volume 5, 
of his historical collections of Massa¬ 
chusetts : “the Church’s Resurrec¬ 
tion, on the fifth and sixth verses of 
Revelation xx. 1642 a Modest and 
Clear Answer to Mr. Ball’s discourse 
onset forms of Prayer; Exposition 
of Revelation xvi. ; the True Consti¬ 
tution of a particular visible church, 
1643; the Keys of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, and power thereof, 1644; 
the Doctrine of the Church, to which 
is committed the Keys of the King¬ 
dom of Heaven ; the Covenant of 
God’s Free Grace most sweetly un¬ 
folded, to which is added, a profession 
of faith, by Mr. Davenport, 1645— 
3d edition, 1671; the Way of the 
Churches of Christ in New England, 
or the Way of the Churches walking 
in brotherly equality, &c.; the pour- 
ingout of the Seven Vials; the Con¬ 
troversy concerning liberty of Con¬ 
science truly stated, 1646; a Treatise, 
showing that the Singing of Psalms 
is a good Gospel Ordinance, 1647 ; 
the Grounds and Ends of the Bap¬ 
tism of the Children of the Faithful, 
1647; a Letter to Mr. Williams; the 
Bloody Tenet washed, and made 
white, by the Blood of the Lamb, 
being discussed and discharged of 
blood guiltiness by Just Defence, in 
answer to Mr. Williams, to which is 
added, a reply to Mr. Williams, an¬ 
swer to Mr. Cotton’s letter, 1647; 
Questions propounded to him by the 
teaching elders, with his answer to 
each question; the Way of Congre¬ 
gational Churches cleared in two 
treatises; against Mr. Baylie and Mr. 


Rutherford, 1648 ; of the Holiness of 
Church Members, proving that visi¬ 
ble saints arc the matter of the 
church, 1650; Christ the fountain of 
Life, 1651; a brief exposition of Ec¬ 
clesiastes, 1654; his censure of the 
way of Mr. Hambden of Kent, 1656 ; 
Sermons on the first epistle of John, 
folio ; a Discourse on things indiffer¬ 
ent, proving, that no church govern¬ 
ors have power to impose indiffer¬ 
ent things upon the consciences of 
men; Exposition of Canticles ; Milk 
for Babes; a Catechism ; Meat for 
Strong Men; a Discourse about civil 
government in a plantation, whose 
design is religion.” The foregoing 
works were probably all printed at 
the Cambridge press. Wenad made 
a catalogue of the works of this dis¬ 
tinguished, early writer, but after 
considerable research, found one far 
better made at our hands, by that 
learned, pious, and indefatigable bio¬ 
grapher, Doctor Allen. Every scho¬ 
lar in that age wrote poetry; for 
they called all their productions 
poetry, that had been twisted out of 
the ordinary connexion of common 
prose;—but at this period, they had 
no good models of English versifi¬ 
cation, but Spenser; and they did 
not relish his use of antiquated 
words: however, there were some 
who had the soul of poetry in them. 

Anne Bradstreet, who wrote a vo¬ 
lume of poems, which were printed 
as early as 1642, was formed by na¬ 
ture for a poet. She was the wife 
and daughter of a governour, and 
was well educated. Her works were 
historical, metaphysical, and pious; 
she was as much praised in that day 
as any of the favourites of the muses 
are in our times by kind friends ? and 
she had no fear of criticks, for ail the 
satire was reserved for polemick di¬ 
vinity in that day. 

Hooker, who came to this coun¬ 
try with Cotton and Stone, was a 
distinguished writer, whose works 
made up a part of the literature of 
that age. He wrote a work on 
church discipline, and published a 
volume of sermons. 

John Norton was one of the great 
scholars of that early time; he wrote 
a Latin book in answer to certain 
questions put to him by the divines of 
Zealand, and many other works up¬ 
on theological subjects, taking rank 
with Cotton and others of his school. 







HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


322 

While literature was cultivated, 
mathematicks were not forgotten.— 
John Sherman delivered lectures on 
numbers, and on moral and political 
economy, as far as the science was 
then understood. He taught all who 
listened to him, how to make the best 
use of the means heaven had given 
them; both spiritual and temporal. 

Winthrop, governour of Connecti¬ 
cut, was son of the chief magistrate 
of Massachusetts, and a learned 
man; he was a philosopher. 

Roger Williams, who was the 
founder of Rhode Island, possessed 
more learning than he had credit for 
in those days, as his creed was ob¬ 
jectionable to many ; some of his po¬ 
etry, and his vocabulary of the Indi¬ 
an language, have come to light of 
late years, which place him among 
the best bred scholars of that age.— 
He is the father of toleration in this 
country, which is praise enough for 
one man. 

Among the most gifted minds of 
early times was that of Ann Hutch¬ 
inson, the wife of a respectable rep¬ 
resentative in the legislature from 
Boston. She was metaphysical and 
eloquent—she admired Cotton, and 
he had a great respect, as a man of 
intellect must always have, for a wo¬ 
man of such commanding talents.— 
She had meetings of women, and 
broached what the lords of creation 
thought new doctrines. There was 
a little touch of what is now called 
Swedenborgianism in her creed, 
for she asserted “ that believers are 
personally united with the spirit of 
God;” and perhaps she assumed a 
deeper look into futurity than most 
other women. All this was harmless 
enough, but not so for the grave di¬ 
vines of her time. They called a 
synod in 1637, the first ever called in 
America.This convention condemned 
eighty-two of her erroneous opinions; 
and the poor woman, for thinking 
deeper, and reasoning probably bet¬ 
ter, than her judges, was banished 
from Massachusetts. She was a 
fine spirited woman, and ought to 
have been made a teacher in the 
churches, instead of receiving a de¬ 
cree of banishment. She went to 
Rhode Island, “ the asylum of here¬ 
tics,” the highest eulogy that ever was 
pronounced on any State. She lived 
there a few years, when her husband 
died, and she removed to New York. 


In 1643, she, and the restof her family 
were slain by the Indians; this was 
considered by the superstitious as .a 
just punishment for her numerous er- 
rours in religion. The Hon. James 
Savage, one of the first scholars of 
this country, is descended from Ann 
Hutchinson; and prides himself, no 
doubt, on his ancestry, for who 
would not be vain of having de¬ 
scended from such a gifted woman 7 

Elliot had versified David’s Psalms, 
which were unpopular; and Dun- 
ster, president of Harvard College, 
a ripe oriental scholar, attempted to 
revise them; it would have been bet¬ 
ter had he attempted to translate 
them altogether anew. This corrected 
version was at length superseded by 
that of Tate and Brady ; which was 
in the next generation superseded by 
the fine version of Dr. Watts. 

The first tragedy written in Ame¬ 
rica, was from the pen of Benjamin 
Coleman, while he was a student in 
Harvard College, entitled Gustavus 
Vasa, and was enacted at Harvard 
College at a regular commencement. 
He studied divinity, and was settled 
at Boston. He was eloquent and 
affectionate, and was called upon to 
pronounce the eulogies of most of 
the great men, who died in his time. 
Fromhi3 sermons, more than a hun¬ 
dred in number, many facts have been 
taken for the biographies of the “il¬ 
lustrious men who were his prede¬ 
cessors.” 

Others were also distinguished as 
scholars, divines, and philosophers; 
but none more so than the Mathers, 
father and son. Increase, the elder, 
was president of Harvard College, 
was an agent for the colony in Eng¬ 
land, ancf wrote a great many excel¬ 
lent works. , He was one of the 
chief labourers in the literary vine¬ 
yard ; and as such, was surpassed 
only by his son Cotton, the greatest 
prodigy of learning, of this, or of 
almost any other age or country. 
Cotton Mather was born in 1663, at 
which time the whole country was 
new, and the views even of the 
statesman and divine extended but 
little beyond the plantation, as a re¬ 
ligious community, and before many 
had looked forward to the growth 
and power of the Colonies. Cotton 
Mather was the most voluminous 
writer that ever appeared in this coun¬ 
try. The number of his works, ac- 




323 


HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


cording to one of his biographers, 

amounted to 333 ; many of them of 
considerable size. The Magnalia is 
the one now most often read. It 
contains a great portion of histori¬ 
cal matter, and often serves for data 
to those who most violently abuse 
the author and his writings. A deep 
hatred against him, was fixed in the 
minds of many, at the course pursued 
in the affair of witchcraft in 1692, and 
revious. Mather was deceived, for 
e could not have intended to do 
wrong, and ha3 only the sin to an¬ 
swer for which lies at the door of 
many now-a-days, “ of forgetting, 
in their zeal to do good , the necessi¬ 
ty of examining the means they use 
to effect their purpose” 

To Robert Calef, we owe much; 
he was opposed to Mather’s course, 
and came out boldly against it. His 
facts are clearly stated, and his rea¬ 
sons fairly given. The common 
sense of the people was awakened, 
and the whole delusion vanished, but 
not without a struggle on the part of 
the Mathers, and their friends. 

Michael Wigglesworth, was con¬ 
temporary with Cotton Mather, but 
his senior.—He was an invalid most 
of his days, and his mind naturally 
turned on solemn subjects. As was 
not uncommon at that time, he acted 
in the double capacity of divine and 
physician to his flock. He was, for 
many years, confined to his house, 
and there he sought to do good by 
his poetry. He published a poem, 
called the Day of Doom ; it was a 
poetical description of the great and 
awful day of judgement. He also 
published a discourse on eternity, 
and several other short labours upon 
the solemn subjects of a change of 
worlds. Wigglesworth was a poet 
of no ordinary genius, and of exten¬ 
sive acquirements. His descendants, 
down to this day, have, in every 
generation, been distinguished for 
talents and learning. There is a 
deep feeling in his Day of Doom, 
which only wants the skill of mo¬ 
dern verse, to make greatly effective. 
The same thoughts, wrought up by 
Scott or Moore, would be admired. 

The first century of New England 
history was closing as the Mathers 
went down to the tomb. The scho¬ 
lars now in life had been educated at 
Harvard College, and all the states¬ 
men and literati seemed to consider 


this their native land, which had not 
been the case for a great part of the 
first century. Connecticut now put 
in her claims for distinction. She 
had commenced a college, and could 
already boast of many intelligent 
men in every walk of life. Good 
Dean Berkeley, and others, had been 
roused by the reputation the colonies 
had acquired, in their short existence, 
and were desirous of having a share 
in the literature of the country.— 
Berkeley foresaw the coming glories 
of this country ; and though it was 
not in the nature of things for him to 
realize his anticipations, yet his vis¬ 
ions were prophetick. What he wait¬ 
ed for and expected in his day, 
came in due time, even in less than 
a century. He is not less a seer that 
foretells events, because he cannot 
answer for times ; things are often 
disclosed when the hour of their ad¬ 
vent is hidden, notwithstanding this: 
the little poem by the Dean upon this 
country has been and still is consi¬ 
dered a sort of prophecy. 

When William and Mary came to 
the throne of Great Britain, a new 
charter was given to Massachusetts, 
and war and conquest, in some mea¬ 
sure, took the place of religious dis¬ 
cussions. Sir William Phipps brought 
out lawyers with him, and some 
new books, which had an effect on 
the taste of the times. Publick 
schools were now cherished; com¬ 
merce was engaged in; and the 
whole people began to believe that 
they were destined for something 
more than a mere plantation for re¬ 
ligious purposes. The people began 
to think that the press was intended 
for more than an instrument to 
make numerous copies of a book, 
and held it in the light of a security 
for the liberties they possessed.— 
Book printing had been known in 
Boston for many years before a 
newspaper was established. In 1636 
books were printed, but it was not 
until 1704 that a newspaper was es¬ 
tablished. In 1686 there was a press 
set up in Philadelphia, and in seven 
years afterwards in New York—but 
pamphlet printing constituted the 
most of the business. The clergy 
were the great patrons of the press 
for the first century. 

The News Letter was published 
at Boston in 1704, and continued for 
the space of seventy-two years, un- 






324 


HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


til after the commencement of the 
war of the revolution. The Boston 
Gazette was next established, and 
the tmrd was the New England 
Courant, by the elder brother of Ben¬ 
jamin Franklin, and in which that 
great philosopher was engaged as 
an apprentice. The first paper pub¬ 
lished in Philadelphia was issued in 
1719, and the first in New York in 
1725. 

Among the most valuable writers 
of this country was Thomas Prince, 
the chronologist ;he was a fine scho¬ 
lar, deeply read in civil, military, and 
ecclesiastical history. He travelled, 
became an excellent oriental scho¬ 
lar, and returned home fraught with 
all the collected wisdom of the old 
world, and at once set about doing 
something for the honour of his na¬ 
tive land. He was the first who gave 
an account of the Aurora Borealis in 
this country. This phenomenon was 
seen by most with superstitious 
dread but he met it upon sound 
principles of natural philosophy, and 
calmed the fears of the pubhck. His 
productions are numerous, and are 
all marked with great good sense; 
but his chronology is tne most es¬ 
teemed of all his works, for its pro¬ 
found research. It is to be lament¬ 
ed that he did not bring his work 
down to more modern times. He 
spent too much time on the fabu¬ 
lous or doubtful parts of history to 
finish a table of the minute events of 
his own times. His labours should he 
continued by some of his country¬ 
men, for there are ample materials 
for such a work ; but perhaps who¬ 
ever would undertake the task, would 
find himself but ill-paid for his trou¬ 
ble, and mortified as Prince was, at 
its slow sale; for while the publick 
were praising the work, the writer 
was left to pay the printer. It is of¬ 
ten to be regretted, that the book 
which the learned admire, and ex¬ 
toll, finds, perhaps, but few purcha¬ 
sers. 

Benjamin Franklin was born in 
1706, and while a youth, was distin¬ 
guished for his talents. He marked 
out a new path for himself His es¬ 
says were plain, and so full of good 
sense, that he became at once a pop¬ 
ular writer. In 1732, he began his 
Poor Richard’s Almanack, which 
abounded in such aphorisms and 
sayings as would attract all tastes 


and were useful for all conditions.— 

He then became a political writer, 
and was the first to gather a suffi¬ 
cient body of statisticks to form cor¬ 
rect opinions, and probably was the 
best informed man on general colo¬ 
nial subjects in the country. He 
next made many experiments in elec¬ 
tricity, for the safety of hum an life. He 
also suggested a plan of union and 
defence for the colonies. His whole 
life was one long day of mental ef¬ 
forts, and his writings have an in¬ 
fluence on this enlightened age. 

David Mason, a pupil of Franklin, 
in a few years after the philosopher’s 
experiments in electricity, gave lec¬ 
tures upon the science, and excited 
the wonder of the people at the phe¬ 
nomena he exhibited by his ma¬ 
chine. He was also acquainted with 
the science of chymistry, as it was 
then known in Europe ; and was 
called by the legislature of Massa¬ 
chusetts to teach the art of making 
gunpowder. 

From the first settlement of the 
country, the almanacks had exhibit- 
; ed a sufficiency of science for their 
general purposes, and oftentimes 
much more; and the literary in¬ 
formation they contained was pro- 
; Stable, and widely diffused. 

Doctor William Douglas wrote a 
summary account of the colonies, 
and something on botany, statis¬ 
ticks, and political economy. 

Paul Dudley was the first in this 
country who turned his attention to 
natural history, and some of his pa¬ 
pers are specimens of fine writing. 

Mark Catesby’s works at this 
time became known. He travelled 
through Virginia and South Caro¬ 
lina ; both of which abounded in 
plants, animals, and eminent mate¬ 
rials for a naturalist. He returned 
to Europe, and procured assistance 
in getting out his work; a produc¬ 
tion which has much assisted our 
botanists in later times. 

The. science of mind had now be¬ 
gun to call forth the attention of the 
ablest men in this country. Po- 
Iemick divinity had lost some of its 
popularity, and new paths of learn¬ 
ing were to be explored. Among the 
most distinguished of these philoso¬ 
phers, was Jonathan Edwards, who 
wrote on the “ Freedom of the 
Will.” This work has received the 
highest encomiums from those great 




HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


325 


ttien of Europe, who have made 
metaphysicks a study.—Sir James 
Mackintosh, in the last labour of his 
mind, spoke of Edwards with pro¬ 
found respect. The works of our 
metaphysician have been published 
in eight octavo volumes, of large 
size, and, to the credit of the coun¬ 
try, sold well. His son was quite 
as profound in the science as his fa¬ 
ther, and his style more clear and 
attractive; but the second in any 
pathway, has generally less fame 
than the leader. 

In 1763, the subject of introducing 
bishops into America, brought for¬ 
ward some of its best writers, 
among whom was Abthorp, rector of 
the episcopal church in Cambridge. 
It was a harmless affair in itself, but 
was made, from fears of the orthodox 
uritans, a matter of moment. Sea- 
ury, Johnson, Chauncey, and May- 
hew, all engaged in the controversy, 
and displayed no ordinary talents. 
In Mayhew’s productions there was 
much energy and bold freedom of 
political remark. He discovered no 
partiality for Saint Charles I., and 
refused to put him upon the calendar 
of the pious army of martyrs, al¬ 
though it was certain that he died 
after the manner of them. Doctor 
Mayhew was one of those men who 
enter so deeply into the affairs of 
their professional duties, that they 
forget how much is justly due to 
their animal nature—and wore him¬ 
self fairly out, before he had reached 
the best age of mental labour. He 
died at the age of forty-six, of a 
nervous fever, brought on by exces¬ 
sive study. 

Several institutions of learning 
had been founded, and were in a 
state of hopeful experiment , besides 
the college at Cambridge. Yale 
College was in a thriving condition 
long before the period to which we 
have brought down our cursory re¬ 
marks upon American literature;— 
and the college at Providence, (now 
Brown University, and under excel¬ 
lent auspices,) had connected with 
it some fine scholars. Nassau Hall 
had been founded, and a circle of 
learned men were soon brought from 
its walls—the Burrs, and the Ed¬ 
wardses are among them. Columbia 
College, (then King s College,) had 
gone into operation before some of 
mose we have mentioned; as also 
2 B 


Dartmouth College, and all were do¬ 
ing well. There was now some¬ 
thing fixed and settled, as it regard¬ 
ed future operations in the arts and 
sciences. At this juncture the revo¬ 
lutionary troubles came on—but 
there were mighty minds harnessed 
for the hour of battle. The mental 
resources of the country had been 
collecting for the crisis ; and all were 
fearless in the cause. We pause a 
moment, to show who wrote on this 
subject. The currents of Time will 
let these records last. 

Among the writers, whose works 
nrore immediately assisted in bring¬ 
ing on the revolution, we may re¬ 
cord James Otis. In 1765 he wrote 
a pamphlet on the stamp act. This, 
at the time, was considered an ex¬ 
cellent piece of fine writing, and was 
republished in London by the friends 
of America. The works of Mr. Otis 
were not numerous; and there can 
be no doubt, but that his fame as an 
orator, added much to his reputation 
as a writer ; and more than this, the 
nature of his subjects at that time 
were all-absorbing. His writings, 
however, aside from their political 
character, had, it was agreed by 
friends and foes, great merit. He 
wrote, “ A vindication of the con¬ 
duct of the House of Representa¬ 
tives of Massachusetts,” in 1762; 
the Rights of the British Colonies 
Asserted, 1764 ; and Considera¬ 
tions on behalf of the Colonists, 
1765. These productions were scat¬ 
tered through the country, and 
every copy was read at least by five 
hundred persons, so popular was all 
he wrote at the time; and in the 
discussions upon the subject, more 
anecdotes of the effects of his elo¬ 
quence were told, than ever Greek 
or Roman had in store for the fame 
of Demosthenes or Tully : but aba¬ 
ting much for all the enthusiasm of 
the times, there can be no doubt but 
he had a powerful pen, and a tongue 
of fire. 

Another of that band of patriots, 
whose writings did much to awaken 
and cherish the flame of liberty, was 
John Adams. He wrote, several es¬ 
says over the signature of Novan- 
glus, in answer to some papers on 
the royal side, signed Massachu- 
tentis, written by a lawyer of the 
name of Leonard. These were pa¬ 
pers creditable to both, as matters 






826 HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


of argument, and were admired and 
extolled, as people took sides. Mr. 
Adams was on the popular side upon 
the great questions then agitated in 
the country. During this period, he 
had acted in the highest political 
capacities ; but here we have only to 
mention his writings. He published 
“ A Defence of the American Consti¬ 
tution,” to appease an opinion then 
prevalent among many patriots, that 
a single assembly was the only 
true government. This opinion was 
advocated both in England and 
France, and it cannot be denied, 
was favoured by Franklin. Mr. 
Adams ransacked history to show 
that such a government was defect¬ 
ive, and the theory is now at rest. 
In his old age, and in retirement, 
Mr. Adams poured out his opinions 
in a series of pieces, which afford 
the statesmen many early facts, and 
opinions which are valuable to the 
historian. His style was bold and 
characteristick, and evinced marks 
of deep reading, and profound re¬ 
flection. 

Samuel Cooper, a clergyman of 
Boston, was a constant writer in the 
cause of liberty. He wrote a poli¬ 
tical discourse, as early as 1759, on 
the taking of Quebeck, which direct¬ 
ed the attention of the politicians of 
the day to him, as master of a find* 
pen in the cause of rational liberty. 
All his writings, from that time, had 
a bearing on the great question be¬ 
tween the mother country and the 
colonies. There was an eloquence 
and grace in his productions, beyond 
the style of the times, and he be¬ 
came a man of wonderful influence 
in all political controversies. Works 
of this nature, in some measure, 
lose their charm in an after age,— 
but Cooper’s writings are tasteful at 
this day. 

J6siah Quincy ranks among the 
writers of that day as wielding an 
elegant pen. He was a man of ge¬ 
nius, and earnestly engaged in the 
cause of freedom: and when the 
Boston Port Bill came to this coun¬ 
try, and was put in force, he wrote a 
pamphlet, entitled, “Thoughts on 
the Boston Port Bill, &c., addressed 
to the freeholders and yeomanry of 
Massachusetts.” It was spirited, 
and in many parts highly eloquent. 
He had much of the Grecian spirit, 
and not a small share of Athenian 


eloquence. He fell a victim to his 
vigils of patriotism in early life- 

One of the best writers of the age, 
was John Dickinson, who was born 
in Maryland, but was active in 
Delaware and Pennsylvania. In 
1767, he began to publish tracts 
against the taxation of the colonies. 
These were masterly productions, 
and deserve to rank among the best 
specimens of American genius. He 
was a member of the Congress of 
1774; and his pen was frequently 
employed in drafting the most im¬ 
portant state papers. The address 
to the inhabitants of Canada, the 
first petition to the king, the ad¬ 
dress to the army, the second pe¬ 
tition to the king, and the ad¬ 
dress to the several states, were 
writterf by him. One of these pe¬ 
titions to the king, was the produc¬ 
tion which called forth the memora¬ 
ble compliment from Lord Chatham, 
in which he called him superiour to 
any classical writer of antiquity. 
While president of Delaware, he 
published a proclamation to his peo¬ 
ple, full of lessons of wisdom. When 
the constitution of the United States 
was under discussion, he wrote a 
number of letters, signed Fabius, in 
order to forward the adoption of it, 
which merit reading at the present 
day. Many other works came from 
his hand, all tending to publick good. 
His works have been collected and 
published in two volumes; but are 
now onlv to be found in publick libra¬ 
ries, and with those who are lovers 
of the curious and rare; they ought, 
and will be reprinted, and placed 
along side of the Federalists and 
other standard works of American 
literature. 

South Carolina boasts, and with 
justice, of her patriotick writers in the 
great cause of freedom, one of whom 
was William Henry Drayton. He 
was a prime scholar—enlightened 
and polished by foreign travel. On 
coming home, he became at once a 
patriot, and took up his pen in the 
cause of his country. He wrote a 
pamphlet, addressed to Congress, 
under the signature of “Freeman,” 
in which he expatiated upon the 
grievances of America, and then 
openly stated their rights. He also 
published a charge to the grand jury 
of his state, which is now incorpo¬ 
rated into the history of those times. 




HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


He also wrote a history of the Ame¬ 

rican Revolution, but his materials 
were not so extensive as those of 
Ramsay and others. 

William Livingston, of New Jer¬ 
sey, wrote many things to rouse 
the people of his state to vigor¬ 
ous exertions in the cause of liber¬ 
ty, and was justly ranked among 
the patriots and fine writers of 
his time. He was not confined to 
one department of literature, for his 
poetry had as much spirit as his 
prose. He presented to the New 
\ ork Historical Society, or his son 
did, from his library, the journal of 
the British House of Commons for 
several years, comprising the period 
commencing a year or more before 
the death of Charles the First, and 
extending nearly to the time of the 
restoration. They are proved to be 
genuine md original from the fol¬ 
lowing indices, viz.: from the water¬ 
marks of the paper on which they 
are written; the first volumes have 
the royal stamp on the paper; the 
next, the fools-cap and bills, order¬ 
ed by government in derision, to take 
the place of the royal arms ;—this 
continues for some volumes, and 
then appear the arms assumed by 
the commonwealth; and then, those 
of the lord protector, Oliver Crpm- 
well. • These volumes unquestion¬ 
ably were brought over to this coun¬ 
try by the regicides, who wished to 
hide the record of their proceedings, 
in order to prevent Charles II. from 
finding out all that was done in his 
exile. This was the safest place for 
them, and here they will be pre¬ 
served for future history. It is a sin¬ 
gular fact, that every English histo¬ 
rian is silent upon their loss, and 
no one has ever pretended to quote 
these journals; yet much useful mat¬ 
ter may be extracted from them, 
and many things that English his¬ 
tory does not contain may be found 
there. Some one of the Livingston 
family may give a minute history of 
their being found in this country. 
It would be as acceptable as curious. 

David Dulany, of Maryland, was 
one of the writers upon political sub¬ 
jects, previous to the revolution. He 
wrote several treatises on the great 
subjects of taxes and other matters, 
which agitated the colonies at that 
time ; but he did not live to see the 
end of the contest, in which he 


________327 

had so heartily entered and with 
so much reputation. He was one 
of the number who were early 
called to their account; but it is 
a remarkable fact, that those who 
entered into the cause of freedom— 
heart and soul—lived longer than 
most other men;—whether it was 
because they were animated with he- 
roick sentiments, or from some other 
reason, the fact is nevertheless cer¬ 
tain, that the signers of the declara¬ 
tion of independence, as a body of 
men, arrived at a greater age, and died 
more quietly, than any fifty-six that 
could ever be named, as acting to¬ 
gether in any important national 
concern. 

Virginia had her share of good wri¬ 
ters, who were engaged in enlighten¬ 
ing the American people during the 
revolutionary contest. The Lees 
were among the most distinguished. 
Richard Henry Lee, among other 
works, wrote what has been called 
the “ Farmer’s Letter,” and the se¬ 
cond address to the people of Great 
Britain. These productions evinced 
patriotism and scholarship. Arthur 
Lee, his brother, was also a political 
writer of distinction. He wrote let¬ 
ters under the signature of Junius 
Americanus, which held a high rank 
at the time, among the literati of 
America. Mr. Jefferson wrote the 
declaration of independence, Notes 
on Virginia, and a Manual of Parlia¬ 
mentary Practice for the use of the 
Senate of the United States, which 
was an abridgement, with some al¬ 
terations, from Hatsell’s great work 
on the same subject. Hatsell was 
clerk of the House of Commons from 
1768 to 1797, and was thoroughly 
acquainted with all the rules and 
order of parliamentary proceedings, 
which is a science in itself, not tho¬ 
roughly understood by many politi¬ 
cians. Mr. Jefferson’s acute mind 
at once penetrated the arcana. 

It would be unjust to pass over 
General Joseph Warren, who fell at 
Bunker Hill, in our notice of those 
who had added to the stores of Ame¬ 
rican literature. He was a frequent 
writer in the periodical journals of the 
day, where he poured forth all the 
warmth of his soul. He delivered two 
orations on the Boston massacre, one 
in 1772, and another in 1775 ; and per¬ 
haps no two orations since the days 
of Demosthenes’ orations against 






328 HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


Philip, ever had such an influence 
upon an audience, or such an effect 
upon the people generally. These 
productions have been used for de¬ 
clamation by every schoolboy since 
that time. The burst of indigna¬ 
tion—the high toned patriotism—the 
fundamental maxims of a free peo¬ 
ple, all came in torrents of eloquence; 
and its effects were felt through the 
country. On the 17th of June, 1775, 
he sealed his course with his blood, 
being the first martyr of the revolu¬ 
tion. He was assisted in defending 
the views of freemen and their rights,' 
by Hancock, Church, and others of 
note, who were zealous in the cause 
of their country. 

The literature of the revolution, 
was bold, direct, and without any 
affectation. Any high exertions of 
mind will produce new and ardent 
expressions; and these, after a while, 
will be moulded by taste. If you 
take the orders and proclamations 
of Washington—the letters written 
by him in the exigencies of the mo¬ 
ment,—there will be found that 
strength and felicity of expression, 
that is supposed to be the offspring 
of care and leisure. Some of the 
writings of Knox, Schuyler, Brooks, 
Laurence, and others, during the 
most gloomy parts of the contest, 
are marked with excellent sense, 
and often are elegant compositions. 
The commentaries of Caesar, were 
written in a camp.—When the mind 
is under excitement, we often find 
that it receives the best method of 
thought and expression. In the in¬ 
tercourse of a camp, some minds 
are always found, which give a direc¬ 
tion and tone to the rest. It was so 
in our army; and even in a prison, 
instruction may be received. 

It is a singular fact, that the diplo- 
matick correspondence of the revo¬ 
lution has not been surpassed ; nor 
has modern times improved much 
upon the styles of Adams, Washing¬ 
ton, Lee, Jefferson, Hamilton, or 
Dickinson. The poets of those days, 
had not the models before them, that 
they now have ; but few productions 
contain more elegant satire,than can 
be found in M’Fingal, or more patri¬ 
otism than can be discovered in the 
arousing songs of Freneau. When 
one mind pervades all classes of men, 
■mprovement is rapid; every beam 
of light that is reflected, and refract¬ 


ed in a community, acting in unison, 

increases the force and power of the 
ray. If the whole nation had gone to 
school, instead of going to fight, they 
would not have learned as much as 
-they did in the eight years’ war they 
waged for independence. Heaven 
never intended that the choicest 
blessings should be had without 
pains and labour. 

Since the revolution, we may fairly 
class the writers that have been con¬ 
spicuous in our country; for, not¬ 
withstanding our habits and forms of 
society did not allow any one to fol¬ 
low exclusively one course, yet there 
has been a finer opportunity for men 
to display their particular talents, 
than there was when every one bent 
his whole soul to one great object, 
that of gaining for his country the 
rank of an independent nation. A 
nation, like an individual, must go 
through a course of discipline, to form 
a character. It might be impossible 
to form a nation that should bring 
all their energies to the best possible 
direction, without going through a 
series of difficulties, teaching for¬ 
bearance, sacrifices of local prejudi¬ 
ces, and making each part acquaint¬ 
ed with the characters of the whole. 
The revolution contributed as much 
to the advancement of learning, as 
it was necessary to the formation of 
national character. 

Before the revolution, it was diffi¬ 
cult to place our writers into classes, 
for almost all were miscellaneous in 
their productions; since that period, 
notwithstanding no man has exclu¬ 
sively followed any one branch of 
learning, still the classification is 
more distinct than in former times, 
and we shall give an account of our 
authors and their works under dis¬ 
tinct heads. 

History and Biography. —Ram 
say’s history of the United States, 
ranks among the best works we have 
in our libraries. He had - ample ma 
terials for his work, and particularly 
that part of it which relates to the 
revolution, as he was a member of 
Congress, at one time president of 
that body, and consulted with Wash¬ 
ington upon all the important events 
of the revolutionary war. He was a 
fair-minded historian. He also wrote 
a compend of universal history, 
which did him great credit. 

Holmes’ Annals of America, from 






329 


HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


1492 to 1826—the second edition in 
two large volumes, is one of the most 
useful works ever printed in the Uni¬ 
ted States. It is pretty copious, very 
correct in dates, and in description 
of events, and adorned with much 
accurate and excellent biography. 
It is written by a scholar, who had 
no prejudices, who is a great anti¬ 
quarian, and a lover of his country ; 
and if it now and then shows a little 
more partiality to saints of his own 
creed than to saints of another creed, 
it requires no small sagacity to find 
it out. Every future historian will 
plunder him; but it will be impossible 
for any one to abuse him. A more 
unpretending, and a more valuable 
work, was never published.—Mar¬ 
shall’s history of the Colonies, and, 
his life of Washington, are valuable 
works ; what they want in the charm 
of fine writing is amply made up in 
accurate observation and impartial 
delineation. 

The histories of the several States 
have been written with more or less 
ability. Belknap’s history of New 
Hampshire is a work of merit. He 
had access to the best materials, and 
he wrote with honesty, intelligence, 
and taste. In fact, it is one of the 
best specimens of the style of our 
writer’s extant. It is a remarkable 
fact, that no one has attempted the 
subject since, except in the way of 
illustration or explanation. 

Sullivan, a man of genius and 
learning, has written the history of 
the District, now the State, of Maine, 
but his materials were scanty, and 
notwithstanding he did all that a 
man of talents at that time could do, 
yet a more copious history of that 
growing state is wanted. 

The history of Massachusetts has 
been more fully written out than that 
of any other state. In addition to 
the works of Winthrop, Hubbard, 
and others of the early settlers, we 
have many of modern times that are 
worthy of notice; such as Minott’s 
and Bradford’s histories of Massa¬ 
chusetts, and Hannah Adams’ His¬ 
tory of New England. This lady 
was one of the most candid and ac¬ 
curate historians that ever wrote. 
She set down no assertion that had 
not proof to support it, nor one that 
had a particle of prejudice to be ab¬ 
stracted from it. It may be said, 
without fear of contradiction, that 
2 B 2 


the historians of New England have 
been more assiduous than those of 
any other portion of this extended 
country. 

Trumbull’s history of Connecticut 
is a good ground-work for a fu¬ 
ture writer. He is explicit and ho¬ 
nest ; had nothing to disguise, nor 
did he “ set down aught in malice.” 
The history was an eventful one, and 
he handled it with great simplicity. 

Professor Williams has written a 
history of Vermont, but that state 
has so wonderfully increased in po¬ 
pulation, wealth, and character, that 
it will be only the ground-work of a 
more full history : but it is fortunate 
that this ground-work is so philo¬ 
sophical. The commencement of 
most histories is fable and romance 
—this is otherwise, being fact and 
philosophy. 

Flint has written a history, and 
given some account of the geogra¬ 
phy of the Western States. He is 
shrewd, capable, literary, and elo¬ 
quent. It is impossible that he should 
have done entire justice to this new 
world in so small a compass—but it 
is the first of all considerations, that 
what is done, should be well done, 
—this praise no one will deny him. 
It is to be wished, that he may live 
to fill up his great outlines. 

In modern times, Yates and Moul¬ 
ton have written most excellently 
upon the history of New York, and 
these men are capable of giving a 
full history of this state; but this 
will not probably be done, until the 
government of the state make some 
provision for forwarding the work. 
To give a fair and correct history of 
this state, requires more research 
and labour, than to write the history 
of any other of the states, .as more 
than half a century of it is in Dutch 
records. It is said that the mate¬ 
rials are ample, and there can be no 
doubt of it, as the Dutch were the 
most minute, pains-taking, and accu¬ 
rate of the nations of Europe, and 
they could not have been wanting in 
making journals and observations 
on all the passing events of the times 
in which they lived. New York, 
the centre of the Union, and the mart 
of the world, should have minute 
and well written accounts of all she 
has done, and all she is. 

Stoddard has made some judicious 
sketches of the history of Louisiana, 







330 HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


which deserve credit: but that old 
territory, though new to the United 
States, deserves a full history. It is 
already, and every day becoming 
more important to theUnited States, 
and should be fully known to all the 
members of this great republick. 

M'Call has, with considerable ta¬ 
lent, given us a history of Georgia; 
but there is a more ample field than 
he had at that moment means to 
explore. This state is now a large 
one, although the last settled of the 
old thirteen states. The character 
of Oglethorpe, the founder, has not 
yet been fully written out. 

The histories of Ohio, Kentucky, 
Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, and 
other new states, have only been 
partially written. The lovers of his¬ 
tory should, at this moment, set 
about making exertions to have all 
the facts relating to those interest¬ 
ing sections of the country gathered 
up, and put into proper form. 

Pitkins’ Political and Civil History 
of the United States - is a valuable 
work. It covers a period from 1763 
to 1798. This work shows us more 
of the labours of the statesmen of 
that period, than any other produc¬ 
tion. Miller’s Retrospect of the 
Eighteenth Century is a work of 
great research. It was printed at 
tne commencement of the nine¬ 
teenth century, just as American 
literature began to expand. Thomas’ 
history of Printing is a curious book. 
The writer has done much for learn¬ 
ing, by establishing an antiquarian 
society, and gathering a fine library 
for publick use. He was a printer 
himself, and had treasured up many 
important facts. Lyman’s his¬ 
tory of the Diplomacy of the United 
States is valuable to every states¬ 
man and historian. It required no 
small share of perseverance to collect 
and arrange such a mass of matter. 

Mr. Sparks, an able scholar, who 
has the Washington papers, amount¬ 
ing to sixty volumes of manuscripts, 
and a mass of other matters from the 
Colonial office in England, is now 
furnishing the country with a view 
of these subjects, on a most extend¬ 
ed scale. It will be several years 
before his labours can be finished, 
for he does every thing thoroughly. 

In biography the country has been 
pretty well supplied since the revolu¬ 
tion. Besides the Biographical Dic- 


ticmaries of Elliot, Hardie, Allen, 

Rogers, and others, we have many 
works on this subject, containing 
only a few names, or, in many in¬ 
stances, only one name. Ramsay, 
Marshall, Bancroft, and Weems, 
have published lives of Washington 
in good sized volumes; and a Hun¬ 
dred sketches of the father of his 
country may be found in the journals 
published since and before his death. 

One of the most elegant pieces of 
composition to be found in our lan¬ 
guage of the kind, is Washington 
Irving’s life of Columbus. He went 
to the fountain head for his materials, 
and spared no pains in working them 
up. 

Tudor’s life of Otis is a valuable 
work, not so much for delineation of 
character, as accurate historical an¬ 
ecdote. He was an excellent scholar 
and a great lover of his country. 

The Lees of Virginia, whom we 
have heretofore named in this sketch 
of literary history, have found an 
able historian in one of their de¬ 
scendants. 

Wirt’s life of Patrick Henry has 
been one of the most popular works 
ever printed in our country. It has 
lately appeared in a new edition, with 
the memoir of the author, written in 
good taste. 

Judge Johnson’s life of General 
Greene, is an elaborate and a minute 
work, enriched by some of Greene’s 
correspondence, which shows the 
directness and strength of his mind 
more than anything could do unsup¬ 
ported by such proof. 

A life of Governeur Morris has been 
iven by Mr. Sparks, in addition to 
is other labours, which is a most 
interesting book, full of the events of 
the French revolution, a most im¬ 
portant period in the civilized world. 
The same author has also given to 
the publick the life of the traveller 
Ledyard, whose sober history, with¬ 
out a particle of embellishment, is a 
romantick tale. 

Sanderson’s lives of the signers of 
the declaration, is a clever work. A 
volume containing their lives was 
printed at Hartford; and brief sketch¬ 
es of these distinguished men will be 
found in the first volume of the Trea¬ 
sury of Knowledge, from another 
hand. 

Colden’s life of Robert Fulton is a 
valuable work. It proves how much 





HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 331 


can be done by genius and perseve¬ 

rance. Every inventer should read 
this book, when discouraged by un¬ 
toward events; for never was there 
a more persevering spirit than Ro¬ 
bert Fulton. Who has, in the end, 
done more good ? 

Brown ; the novelist, wrote the life 
°f Dr. Linn. It is a fine specimen 
of writing, and of warm and affec¬ 
tionate colouring. The waiter and 
subject were poets and friends. 
There is a glow in this little work 
that would do honour to the pen of 
Burke. 

Dunlap, the painter and dramatist, 
several years since published the life 
of Charles Brockden Brown. It is a 
fair and faithful account of that dis¬ 
tinguished writer, who died before 
the publick could fully appreciate his 
merits. In the minds of many it 
was thought almost criminal to deal 
in fiction, and some esteemed it 
a species of falsehood; but since 
Brown’s death this prejudice has 
been scattered to the winds by the 
magick wand of Sir Walter Scott, 
ana many admirable lessons of wis¬ 
dom been given through the medium 
of fiction. 

Dr. Hosack’s memoir of De Witt 

• Clinton was written soon after that 
great statesman died. The work 
contains many valuable facts for 
the future historian, expressed in a 
clear and perspicuous manner. The 

# obiturist seemed fearful of eulogy, 
and of being considered too partial to 
his excellent friend, and has spoken 
of him in a subdued tone, when he 
might have indulged in higher notes 
of praise. 

The Poetry of the United 
States, since the declaration of in¬ 
dependence .—The conquest of Ca¬ 
naan, an epick poem, by Timothy 
Dwight, was not published until 
1785; this was hailed as a work of 
high merit. It was written when the 
author was quite young, and is full 
of poetry, certainly; and a hundred 
years hence, will rank higher than it 
now does. He wrote Greenfield Hill, 
and several other poems. Dwight 
was a man of genius,of acquirements, 
and virtue; but he lived too much with 
the pious and particular, to become 
sufficiently acquainted with those in¬ 
cidents that mark the pathway of 
mankind in general, a knowledge of 
which is so essentially necessary to 


the poet. He was a virtuous man 
and a good scholar. 

Joel Barlow published his Vision 
of Columbus, in 1787, and dedicated 
it to Louis XVI. After the first pub¬ 
lication, he remodelled it, called it 
the Columbiad, and made it quite 
another thing, in politicks. This 
has appeared in a most splendid edi¬ 
tion in this country, and m the opin¬ 
ion of many, stands at the head of 
our poetry. He wrote other works, 
such as, Conspiracy of Kings, Hasty 
Pudding, &c. 

General Humphrey also wrote 
poetry, and was considered as one of 
the poetick trio of Connecticut at that 
time. He, with Trumbull, Barlow, 
nd Hopkins, wrote the Anarchiad. 
n 1782 he published a poetical ad¬ 
dress to the armies of the United 
States. He wrote a poem on the 
happiness of America; on the future 
glory of the United States; on the 
industry of the United States, &c. &c. 
He had more of the polish of the sol¬ 
dier than the spirit of the poet; but 
he has many admirers, and still holds 
a rank among the best and most pa- 
triotick writers of this country. 

Richard Alsop was one of the Con¬ 
necticut poets, who wrote for the 
pleasure of the hour. He has the 
credit of getting up the Echo, a work 
of great poetical power, sometimes in 
burlesque and sometimes slyly grave. 
This work contained some admira¬ 
ble hits upon the reigning follies of 
the times, and now and then drew a 
feather across a favourite’s nose. Al¬ 
sop left several unpublished poems, 
and published a good many things 
for amusement only. The Echo is 
one of the best satires ever written 
in this country. His coadjutors 
were Theodore Dwight, Trumbull, 
Hopkins, and others, not so distinct 
ly known. 

" Mrs. Warren should have been 
named before these lards. She wrote 
two tragedies, “ The Sack of Borne ,” 
and “Tne Ladies of Castile.” These 
were written during the war, and all 
for patriotick purposes. Previous to 
them she wrote a play, called “ The 
Group f which contained some for¬ 
cible satire, and had a decided effect 
at the time. She was a sister of the 
great patriot, James Otis, which gave 
some eclat to her writings. She was 
a woman of genius, and a good 
writer. 






HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


332 _ 

Judge Dawes, at the close of the 
revolutionary war, wrote some fine 
poetical pieces, among which were 
“ The Law given on Sinai,” and “An 
Ode on the Death of James Otis.” 

Dr. Joseph Brown Ladd, who died 
in Charleston in 1736, in the twen¬ 
ty-second year of his age, was a fine 
poet. He wrote many things wor¬ 
thy of being preserved. His sister 
has lately gathered up all the pieces 
she could find from his pen, and pub¬ 
lished them in a neat volume. It 
does credit to her affection and his 
genius. It contains a short but ele¬ 
gant biographical notice of Ladd from 
the pen of William Chittenden, Esq., 
a tasteful and spirited writer of the 
city of New York. His prominent 
poems are, an “ Ode to the Sun,” and 
“The Appeal of Almasi, the wife of 
Almaz Ali Cawn,toWarren Hastings, 
governour-general of India.” He 
wrote many other pieces, particular¬ 
ly a series of poems under the signa¬ 
ture of Arnoret. These productions, 
and many of prose, from his pen, bear 
marks of genius, and of precocious 
acquirement. 

John Blair Linn wrote poetry of 
no ordinary character. He was a 
lawyer, a dramatick writer, and then 
a divine. He wrote a poem on “ the 
Death of Washington,” “The Pow¬ 
ers of Genius,” and a play called 
“ Bourville Castle.” He died young, 
much respected. 

Robert Treat Paine claims a high 
rank among the poets of his time. 
He wrote “The Invention of Let¬ 
ters;” “Adams and Liberty.;” and 
“ The Ruling Passion ;” with occa¬ 
sional songs and odes; one, “ the 
Steeds of Apollo,” was his last, and 
in better taste than most of his other 
productions. 

John Lathrop was contemporary 
with Paine. He was a poet of taste, 
but did not write much. His longest 
poem was entitled “ Canonicus ,” 
published first in Calcutta, and re¬ 
printed in Boston. 

Charles Prentiss was among the 
bards of that time. He had taste 
and versatility. His “ Will,” a play¬ 
ful poem, written while at College, 
gave him a high rank in the cata¬ 
logue of wits and poets of the age. 

William Boyd wrote a poem “on 
Woman,” remarkable for delicacy 
and smoothness. It has been read 
by the fair ever since, if not with the 


highest admiration, certainly with 

great pleasure. 

William Clifford, a young quaker 
of Philadelphia, burst out into a most 
courteous address to Gifford, prais¬ 
ing him for his Baviad and M.eviad. 
He wrote some patriotick songs, 
which were quite famous in their 
time. What he wanted in the inspi¬ 
rations of the muse, if any thing 
was wanted, he made up in patriot¬ 
ism. 

Paul Allen, Isaac Story, Captain 
Spence, and Selleck Osborne, were 
all poets, and some of them have 
been highly praised, and no doubt 
with propriety. 

Some few who have written since, 
have gone to their long account, and 
of course we can speak of them as if 
they had not been our contempora¬ 
ries. Some of them wrote beauti¬ 
fully, and their works should be pre¬ 
served by the generations to come. 

It is easy for the just to secure what 
the envious would wish to destroy. 

John G. C. Brainard, who died a 
few years since in Connecticut, was 
a man of talents and principle. The 
columns of the Hartford Courant 
bear testimony to his acquirements 
and taste. A friend of the deceased 
has gathered up his fugitive poems, 
and printed them with a delicate me¬ 
moir of the poet. His temperament 
was sensitive and melancholy. He 
loved not the world, and was taken 
from it early, being only thirty-two . 
years of age. 

Robert C. Sands, who has lately 
descended to the tomb, at the same 
age, was a fine scholar, of exquisite 
taste, and devoted to literary pur¬ 
suits. He was one of the authors of 
that fine poem, Ya-moy-den, which 
he wrote in company with young 
Eastburn, who died several years be¬ 
fore Sands. His works are now 
preparing for publication by his 
friends. Some of his poetry, written 
when quite a boy, is not inferiour to 
the early productions of Henry Kirke 
White. Sands was one of the best 
classical scholars of our country, 
and his works will be read with plea¬ 
sure, as containing many flights of 
a vigorous and fastidious muse. 

We pass over the living poets, still 
with.pen in hand, without comment, 
as the time has not come to do them 
justice, or to speak of them with 
freedom. Many of them' have ac- 





HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 333 


quired an enviable fame in the pur¬ 
suits of literature—Bryant, Halleck, 
Dana, Sprague, Pierpont, Nack, 
VVetmore, Mrs. Sigourney, Miss 
Gould, Mrs. Ware, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. 
Child, Woodworth, Willis, and hun¬ 
dreds of others, who occasionally 
cultivate poetry as an amusement, 
but few or none of them as a pro¬ 
fession. Our votaries of the muse 
are often discouraged from venturing 
on the wing,from watching the flights 
of the eagle geniuses across the wa¬ 
ter, forgetting that most of these 
writers make poetry the great busi¬ 
ness of their lives. Should some of 
our most gifted writers devote them¬ 
selves assiduously to poetry, we 
might soon vie with England in poets 
as we have in orators. Life is too short 
for any one to attend to many things. 
Few American poets keep their pieces 
“nine years;” their productions oft¬ 
en reach an annual, or some peri¬ 
odical, in as many hours; being 
things thrown off as occasion de¬ 
mands, or as caprice may inspire. 

Divinity.— In 1793, Doctor Hop¬ 
kins, a shrewd and deep metaphy¬ 
sician, published a system of divinity, 
which was the foundation of a new 
sect. He differed from Calvin in 
some things, pushing his doctrine 
even beyond the great reformer him¬ 
self. This system had a host of op- 
posers, many of them very learned 
men. 

Doctor Timothv Dwight’s system 
of divinity, published since his death, 
is the most voluminous in the coun¬ 
try, is remarkable for clearness and 
fairness, and seems to be the most 
popular of all the theological works 
ever printed in the United States. 
The beauty of his life gave a charm 
to all matters from nis pen. His 
doctrines are distinctly Calvanis- 
tick. 

For several years, a spirited con¬ 
troversy was carried on between the 
orthodox and the Unitarian clergy, 
in which several gifted and learned 
men took part—Noah Worcester, 
Samuel Worcester, Mr. Stewart, 
Doctor Wood, and others, on the side 
of Calvanism ; and Doctor Chan- 
ning, Mr. Norton, Doctor Ware, Mr. 
Whitman, and others, on the Uni¬ 
tarian side. It was a “ war of the 
giants,” and they perhaps now only 
rest from their labours, neither being 
'•anquished. The reading publick 


have derived much instruction from 

this collision of mighty minds. 

Doctor Emmons has published 
several able discourses, which should 
be read by those who do not, as well 
as by those who do,agree with him in 
sentiment: Emmons belongs to the 
Edwards school of metaphysicians. 

Doctor Freeman has published a 
volume of sermons. Those who do 
not follow his creed, must admire his 
liberal views, and his pure and ele¬ 
gant literature. 

Joseph Buckminster’s sermons, 
published since his death, have more 
of the charm of fine writing than any 
that ever have been published among 
us. If, as some have said, there is a 
want of evangelical divinity in them, 
even these criticks could not deny the 
fact, that there is an Apostolick 
purity running through them, which 
chains the heart to the memory of 
such a man, and fixes the attention 
to so sweet a writer. His Phi Beta 
Kappa oration is a splendid specimen 
of writing. His friend Thatcher 
wrote a memoir of his life. It was a 
description of a bright, particular star, 
that rose, culminated, and set for 
ever, while the magi were gazing at it. 

Others have written volumes of 
sermons, and almost every clergy¬ 
man prints an occasional discourse; 
but as yet, few works on theology, 
written in the United States, have 
issued from the press. There are 
several theological periodicals that 
discover great learning and research. 
The Christian Examiner, published 
at Boston, is much read and admir¬ 
ed by the Unitarians, and commands 
the respect of other sects for its 
chaste literature, gentlemanly cour¬ 
tesy, and high moral tone. 

The Biblical Repository, published 
at Andover, in Massachusetts, is a 
quarterly work. It is learned, and 
every day rising in reputation. An¬ 
dover Theological Institution met 
with much opposition in getting a 
charter. One of its advocates said, 
at that time, “no matter what creed 
they avow, give them an opportunity 
to become learned, and they will, in 
the end, be right, whether it be your 
creed or mine, or neither, they shall 
hereafter teach.” The Christian 
Spectator, published quarterly, at 
New Haven, is one of the most acute 
and candid of all the reviews in the 
whole country. We differ from ma- 








HISTORV OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


334 

ny, in thinking that the science of 
theology is yet in a crude state 
among us. We believe that it has 
received more attention than any 
other science, and is better under¬ 
stood. It is a science which can 
never be brought to any degree of 
perfection. That part of it which is 
founded on nature, is as well read as 
it ever will be in regard to a rever¬ 
ence of the Creator; and that which 
id founded on the faith once delivered 
to the saints, will, in a free country, 
for ever be construed by each one 
as he pleases. Between man and 
his God, there is a communion that 
no philosophy can long interrupt, 
and no false glare long delude. Man 
knows his responsibility; he feels it 
every hour, and if he is “ taught to 
stray” for a season, he comes back 
with a due sense of his dependence, 
and of the necessity of forgiveness 
and mercy. There are several, it is 
said, who are deeply engaged in giv¬ 
ing us true versions of the scrip¬ 
tures ; we wish them success. It 
cannot be doubted, that it is not only 
the prerogative of man to be con¬ 
stantly reasoning upon his Maker, 
as well as his own being;—his be¬ 
nevolent God has so ordained it, and 
the creature should be in the dis¬ 
charge of his duty. Toleration, 
which our constitutions of govern¬ 
ment sanction and defend, can alone 
advance the nation in the service of 
theology. 

Fiction. —As we have before re¬ 
marked, the grave character of the 
people of the British colonies in this 
country, almost entirely precluded 
works of fiction. But among the 
first who ventured indirectly to break 
the spell, was a reverend divine, 
Doctor Belknap. He wrote the 
Foresters, a story made up to divulge 
some of his sentiments upon history, 
politicks, and manners, which he 
thought it was not prudent to express 
directlv. This work was extensive¬ 
ly read in every part of the United 
States, and much admired. 

At the head of American novelists, 
is Charles Brockden Brown. He pub¬ 
lished several novels, viz. Wieland, 
Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, Edgar 
Huntly, Clara Howard, and Jane 
Talbot. They were admired by a 
few men of feeling and taste, but he 
was suffered to expire before they 
reached any prominent eminence. 


Since his death, they have been re¬ 
printed in this country and in Eng¬ 
land, and have received no small 
share of praise from able criticks. 
No one who has read his works, will 
deny them the merit of striking inci¬ 
dent and vivid description. 

Mrs. Foster, soon after this, wrote 
“ the Boarding School,” and “ the 
Coquette.” The latter caused con¬ 
siderable excitement, as some of the 
principal characters were well known. 
These works had the merit of being 
written in good English, and the Co¬ 
quette was a sad tale, too true to be 
called fiction.' 

Mrs. Rawson, who for many years 
was at the head of a school for 
young ladies, wrote, besides school 
books used in her institution, several 
novels—Charlotte Temple; the Sor¬ 
rows of the Heart; Montoria, or the 
Young Lady’s Friend; Sarah, or 
the Exemplary Wife ; Reuben and 
Rachel; a sequel to Charlotte Tem¬ 
ple; and several others. These were 
all read with avidity, for it was 
well understood that her English 
was good, and her motives pure. 
Charlotte Temple went through 
nearly twenty editions. 

Since the novels of Waller Scott 
have been extensively known, se¬ 
veral candidates for fame in this path 
have started forth ; but no one has 
gained more celebrity than James 
Fennimore Cooper. His Spy, Pio¬ 
neers, Red Rover, Last of the Mohi¬ 
cans, the Wept of Wishton-Wish, 
the Pilot, and others, have all been 
extensively read and much admired, 
not only in this country, but in Eng¬ 
land, France and Germany. 

James K. Paulding has written 
several good novels and works of 
satire. His John Bull in America, 
made those for whom it was intend¬ 
ed, feel severely. His Dutchman’s 
Fire-side, and Westward Ho, have 
been very popular. He is a prompt 
and rapid writer. Having been one 
of the authors of the Salmagundi, 
placed him early on elevated ground. 

Timothy Flint, of the Western 
country, has written a novel called 
Francis Berrian, that has been much 
admired, not only at the West, but 
also on the sea-board. He has de¬ 
voted himself to literature, and de¬ 
serves the generous patronage of that 
growing empire. 

Miss Sedgwick is among the very 





HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


best writers in the United States ; 
always sensible, correct, and moral. 
She sees clearly, and expresses for¬ 
cibly what she means. Like Miss 
Edgeworth’s works, her Redwood, 
Hope Leslie, and Clarence, will be 
read in future days with as much 
interest as they are at present. 

Mrs. Child’s Hobomok, Rebels, 
&c. have been justly praised, and by 
those who have taste and judgement. 

Law. —For many years the press 
has teemed with reprints of law 
books; to many of them notes have 
been appended. The twelve thou¬ 
sand practising lawyer's in the United 
States, are in general well provided 
with law books. Not only the laws 
of every state, but the reported de¬ 
cisions of most of their highest courts, 
are readily found in every city, town, 
or village. Some of the best scho¬ 
lars of the country have been engaged 
in multiplying books on the sci¬ 
ence of law. Books of pleadings, and 
practice have been published in 
almost every state in the union, and 
have afforded excellent guides to the 
practitioner. It would exceed our 
limits to name a tithe of them. A 
few who have engaged in great la¬ 
bours we will mention. Mr. Adams 
wrote an essay on Canon and Fed¬ 
eral Law, which had a great reputa¬ 
tion at the time. Nathan Dane was 
engaged for forty years in making 
an abridgment of tne law, which he 
finished eight or ten years since, and 

f iublished it in six large octavo vo- 
umes. He is considered one of the 
profoundest lawyers of the country. 

Chancellor Kent’s Commentaries 
on American law is considered by 
competent judges, to be one of the 
best works since Sir William Black- 
stone published his commentaries. 

Judge Story’s overflowing and ex¬ 
cursive mind, has been busy upon 
almost every part of the law, from 
Constitutional Law to that of Bail¬ 
ments, Shipping, Bills of Exchange, 
&c. &c. . The bar and the bench 
are deeply indebted to this indefati¬ 
gable jurist, who has brought the 
mind of a statesman to the detail and 
principle of jurisprudence. 

Louisiana is indebted to the late 
secretary of state for the United 
States, Edward Livingston, for ar¬ 
ranging the civil code which is now 
in force in that state. By this code, 
every action is commenced by short 


335 


petition or statement. The whole 
of the complex machinery of the 
common law is dispensed with, and 
the forms of special pleadings un¬ 
known in their courts. Mr. Living¬ 
ston has been employed for several 
years in forming a code of criminal 
law. It is divided into a code of 
crimes and their punishments, a 
code of procedure, and a code for 
regulating Penitentiaries. The whole 
is a work of great labour, deep re¬ 
search, clear views of human nature, 
with a current of benevolence run¬ 
ning through it, that has made it the 
admiration of the enlightened in 
every country. If the code is not in 
all its parts adopted, its spirit will, 
in time, pervade the criminal code 
of all civilized countries. 

Medicine.— We have mentioned 
the physicians who were conspicu¬ 
ous previous to the revolution in an¬ 
other place. Since the peace of 1783, 
there has been more activity in the 
profession of medicine and surgery 
than in any other. This profession 
furnished several brave officers in 
the revolution, and many statesmen 
since; among them were, Brooks, 
Cobb, Mercer, St. Clair, Gadsden, 
Bricket, and many others. The first 
martyr in the cause of the revolution 
was Dr. Joseph Warren. His bro¬ 
ther, Doctor John Warren, was sur¬ 
geon-general of the northern army, 
and left the office to pursue his prac¬ 
tice in Boston. The Medical School 
at Cambridge was got up under him, 
and a few others. Dexter, Water- 
house, and others, were his coadju¬ 
tors in the cause. This was the 
second medical school established in 
the United States. Dr. Rush had 
devised a medical school in Philadel¬ 
phia previous to this time, which 
may be considered the first in point 
of time, as it regards its foundation, 
and most assuredly has been second 
to none in its success in forming the 
medical mind in this country. The 
one in New York followed, and it 
has been honoured by distinguished 
professors. The classical Bard; the 
learned Mitchill; the tasteful, inde¬ 
fatigable and copious lecturers, and 
medical writers of a more modern 
day, Hosack, Francis, Smith, and 
many others—have added to the sci¬ 
ence of the healing art, besides ex¬ 
erting a fatherly care over science 
and letters in general. The medi- 






336 


HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


cal school at Dartmouth College was 
the fourth in the country, has flou¬ 
rished ever since its commencement, 
and with its seniors, is every day 
enlarging its influence. Since that 
period many others have grown up, 
which have produced many distin¬ 
guished professors of surgery and 
medicine. It is now difficult to suc¬ 
ceed as a quack, except in some of 
the most ignorant part3 of the coun¬ 
try, and there they are often ferreted 
out. 

Medical Journals are now before 
the publick as periodicals, which do 
honour to the talents and acquire¬ 
ments of their conductors and con¬ 
tributors ; and it is not a little in fa¬ 
vour of the profession, that the faculty 
are among the best friends of learn¬ 
ing in the country. The fears that 
were once entertained, that the study 
of medicine and surgery lead to ma¬ 
terialism, is now done away with; 
for it is now conceded that the stu¬ 
dies connected with this profession, 
when fully carried out in the forms 
of physiology, pathology, and men¬ 
tal phenomena, are all proofs of in¬ 
finite wisdom, and a divine superin¬ 
tendence. If fifty years ago there 
•were few believers in this profession,^ 
it may now claim many of the most 
devout piety. It would be an invidi¬ 
ous task to name those who have 
been distinguished, where all are so 
respectable. 

The Arts and Sciences. —That 
our country abounds in inventive 
genius no one will question who 
takes a glance at the patent office. 
In the course of forty-three years, 
the length of time the patent office 
has been established, there have 
been more than seven thousand in¬ 
ventions recorded; and if you would 
say that there was much trash, 
it must, on the other hand, be agreed, 
that many things there have a claim 
to a high character in the Arts. Ja¬ 
cob Perkins invented many things 
which have saved the labour of ma¬ 
ny—his nail machine, and many 
others. Whitney’s cotton gin, as 
was said by a learned judge, has 
doubled the value of every acre of 
land in North Carolina and Georgia. 
Whittemore’s card-making machine 
was one that received from the 
strange man of Roanoke, an almost 
irreverent compliment, that it was 
“like the love of God, which surpass¬ 


es all understanding The power 

looms of Stinson have been in use in 
every part of the country, and have 
saved labour to an almost incalcu¬ 
lable extent. Look at the store-house 
of these models, and one could not 
say the inventive power of the nation 
has been idle. 

In Mathematical science we have 
not been deficient; the American 
mind is naturally mathematical, 
certainly arithmetical. Many of our 
countrymen have been distinguished, 
abroad for their advancement in this 
science. NathanielBowditch,L.L.D., 
the author of several works on 
navigation, comets, and lastly, the 
translator and commentator of La 
Place, is at the head of our mathe¬ 
maticians. Professor Dean, Adrain, 
and many others, are conspicuous in 
this department of science. A high¬ 
er knowledge of this science is 
now required at our colleges, and 
this branch is certainly much more 
attended to every where than form¬ 
erly. It is found advantageous 
in the business of common life. No 
branch of knowledge is so easily ac¬ 
quired, with proper instruction, as 
this; yet no one gives its possessor 
more celebrity. Two years spent in 
acquiring the varieties of Greek lite¬ 
rature would hardly advance a well 
bred scholar so as to be perceptible 
to his learned friend; but two years 
study in mathematicks would be 
very perceptible. 

A slight view of our history will 
prove that we have been proli- 
fick in painters, from Smybert down 
to the present time. West was born 
in the United States, but his facul¬ 
ties were developed in England.— 
Copley was a native of this country, 
and reached a degree of perfection in 
his art, before he left it, that would 
have made him one of the first por¬ 
trait painters of any age. Hun¬ 
dreds of his portraits are preserved 
among us. Stewart returned to 
this country in the latter part of the 
last century, and for many years 
stood at the head of his profession, 
as a portrait painter. He has left 
numerous paintings to preserve his 
fame, and to show the extent of the 
power of his art in this line. Trum¬ 
bull, the first historical painter of 
our country, still lives, and probably 
like West will die as it were with the 
pencil in his hand. He is as lively 




__ HISTORY OF AMER ICAN LITERATURE. 

as if in the noon-day pf life. Van- 
deblyn, who gained laurels abroad, 
is now engaged on a likeness of 


Washington for the Hall of the 
House of Representatives, in the 
federal city. Dunlap is engaged as 
usual in instructing those of the pre¬ 
sent generation, what those of a for¬ 
mer one suffered. The new genera¬ 
tion of painters, Morse, Cole, Froth- 
ingham, Inman, Leslie, and many 
others, are busy in their calling.— 
There is no danger that this branch 
of the Arts will deteriorate in their 
hands. 

Some few in sculpture are becom¬ 
ing known ; Auger’s Mercury, and 
Jeptha and his daughter, with Green- 
ough’s chanting cherubs, have al¬ 
ready gratified the tasteful in the 
art; and other works are soon ex¬ 
pected from their hands. A taste 
for specimens of sculpture has been 
awakened in this country, and we. 
trust patronage enough to support it 
will follow. The fine arts are of slow 
growth among a people who are en¬ 
gaged in building up their fortunes. 
Monuments to departed greatness 
are becoming common, and artists 
will find employment in this branch. 
The monuments lately erected to 
Kosciusko, at West Point; to Thomas 
Addis Emmet, in the city of New 
York; to Bishop Hobart in Trinity 
church; are proofs that sculpture is 
now held in estimation. What can 
be more delightful to a grateful peo¬ 
ple than these memorials of genius. 
They are the tribute of the living, 
which pass not suddenly away. 

Voyages and Travels.— In this 
department we have some valuable 
works. Delano’s Voyages, Riley’s 
Narrative,Lewis and Clark’s Expedi¬ 
tion to the Sources of the Missouri, 
Pike’s expedition to the sources of 
the Mississippi, Major Long’s expe¬ 
dition to the Rocky Mountains, Kea¬ 
ting’s account of Long’s travels ; 
Doctor Dwight’s travels in the Uni¬ 
ted States, abounding in incident, 
and elegant description, and contain¬ 
ing much valuable historical know¬ 
ledge : Professor Silliman has pub¬ 
lished travels both at home and 
abroad; he is a chaste and careful 
writer, who sees all things with the 
eye of a philosopher. Flint has given 
us a good account of the western 
country, its manners, habits, and 
customs. Captain Benjamin Mor- 


337 

rell has just published an account of 

four voyages to various parts of the 
world. His book abounds in inci¬ 
dents, contains much nautical in¬ 
formation, and more poetical feeling 
than often falls to the lot of a hardy 
sailor. Mrs. Abby Jane Morrell, wife 
of the above named Captain Morrell, 
was with him in his last voyage to 
the Southern Pacifick, and has pub¬ 
lished her narrative. It is a curious 
work, and shows with what intensi¬ 
ty a woman view r s every novelty. 
She is the first female voyager from 
the United States who has published 
a journal. Bigelow has given us a 
volume of travels in Europe, of deep 
interest: he saw things as a scholar 
should view them, and describes 
with great faithfulness. 

Dr. Griseom’s travels are full of 
instruction ; he went out to see and 
describe, and all is done in purity 
and honesty. His principles were 
too firm to be led astray by false 
lights of philosophy, and he had no 
prejudices to indulge. 

Miscellaneous. —Under this head 
we might make a large volume with¬ 
out enumerating one half of those 
works more or less valuable; many 
of them of a high character. In 
philology, Noah Webster stands 
without a rival. He has spent a 
great part of a long life upon the sub¬ 
ject, and if he is not without some 
errors and inconsistencies, they are 
more attributable to the nature of 
the science, than to the want of care, 
industry, or learning in him. 

We are well stocked with school 
books, geographies, gazetteers, gram¬ 
mars of all sorts, and arithmeticks of 
all plans. In statistical works we 
are becoming rich. Several are la¬ 
bouring with assiduity in this depart¬ 
ment. The Gazetteer, by Edwin 
Williams, abounds in tabular infor¬ 
mation, as in other valuable matter. 

In Rhetorick we have several ele¬ 
mentary treatises, but no great work, 
except John Quincy Adams’ Lec¬ 
tures on Rhetorick and Oratory, 
which is a work of genius and of 
bold opinions. He has been too 
much engaged in politicks these 
twenty years past to give them a 
finishing touch. 

The Conversations Lexicon, print¬ 
ed in Philadelphia, and edited bjr Lie- 
ber, Wigglesworth, and Bradford, 
assisted, it is said, in some parts, by 






338 HISTORY OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


Robert Walsh, has added much to 
the facilities of giving information on 
general topicks. Some of its biogra¬ 
phy, however short, is happy, and 
the articles in regard to the United 
States are written in a spirit of can¬ 
dour, and the information is general¬ 
ly drawn from good sources. This 
book will be extensively read, and 
find a prominent place in every vil¬ 
lage library. The plan is a good one, 
that of adding information respect-j 


ing our own country to that brought 
from abroad, and giving, at a glance, 
a panoramick view of a subject. On 
this basis, we have treated the seve¬ 
ral parts of this work, “ the Treasury 
of Knowledge,” and on it we shall 
continue; our own country, always 
first in our affections, must not be 
forgotten, while we seize with avidi¬ 
ty ali that is useful from the old 
world. There should be a perpetual 
union in the republick of letters. 


THE, END. 






Interesting Facts in Brief. 

According to the Edinburg Philosophical Journal, 
in Great Britain the number of individuals in a state 
to bear arms, from the age of 16 to 60, i3 2,744,- 
847. The number of marriages is about Sf8,030 year¬ 
ly; and it has been reckoned that, in 68 of these 
unions, there were only 3 which had no issue. The 
number of deaths is about 332,700 yearly, which 
makes nearly 25,492 monthly, 6,398 weekly, 914 
daily, and 40 hourly. The deaths among the wo¬ 
men are, in proportion to the men, 50 to 54, The 
married women live longer than those who continue 
in celibacy. In the country the mean term of the 
number of children produced by each rharriage is 4; 
in towns the proportion is 7 for every two marria¬ 
ges. The number of married women is to the gene¬ 
ral number of individuals of the sex, as 1 to 3; and 
the number of married men to that of all the indivi¬ 
duals of the male sex, as 3 to 5. The number of 
widows is, to that of widowers, as 3 to 1; but the 
number of widows who marry again is, to that of 
widowers in the same case, as 7 to 4. The half of 
the individuals die before attaining the age of 17 
years. The number of twins is, to that of ordinary 
births, as 1 to 65. According to calculations, found¬ 
ed upon bills of mortality, 1 only in 3,126 attains the t 
age of 100 years. The number of births of the male 
sex is, to that of the female sex, as 96 to 95. 


Erden’s Grand ORGAN.—Ten thousand dollars 
have been appropriated by the Vestry of Trinity 
Church towards the erection of an organ suited to 
I th* style and proportions of “New Trinity.” The 
I organ case will be 52 feethigh, 27 wide, and 32 deep. 

1 The largest wooden diapason pipe will be of such di¬ 
mensions, that the interior will measure upwards of j 
250 cubic feet. The largest metal diapason, in the 
centre of the front of the organ, will be five feet in 
circumference and 28 in length. There are to be four 
separate organs, known by the names of the Gr^ 0 
organ, Swell organ, Choir organ, and Pedal organ; 
43 draw stops, 11 of which will be diapasons, one 52 
feot long, and four of 16 feet in length, besides two 
reed stops of 16 feet. Whole number of pipes 2169. 
Entire weight of the organ estimated altogether at 
40 tons. It will be the largest organ ever erected in 
this country, and there are but few larger in Europe 

























































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